The "instructor" looked at us expectantly and asked: "Now, when you see the police driving around town, what are they doing?"

"Speeding," I said before I could stop myself.

Thus was the tone set for my visit to traffic school.

A cold, miserable snow was falling fitfully as I guided my Pontiac through the unpaved lot, dodging potholes large enough to swallow the Geo Storm I used to own. The insurance agency shared space with some sort of automotive repair business, the entire building a sagging, crumbling hulk with a peeling roof. Posters in the windows proclaimed this imposing edifice a place where the New York Safety Program (NYSP) was imparted to wayward drivers eager to improve themselves. I parked next to a Buick LeSabre with a busted front grille and High School Parking Lot stickers, its occupant a baseball-hat wearing slacker bent over his steering wheel in sleep-deprived lethargy.

Eventually, the course "instructor," Winston Smith, arrived. I left my vehicle, entered the building, and was nodded toward the classroom. "Find a good seat," Winston directed.

The classroom was a small enclosure bordered on two sides by large picture windows, the view through which was completely blocked by drawn blinds. The other two walls were vinyl-covered partitions the thickness of a child's coloring book, through which we could hear the cowboy-hat wearing, heavily bearded men in the other part of the building fixing motorcycles, or some such business. Every time one of these men opened or closed the door to their space, the classroom shook and rattled. The only time I've felt a similar sensation was at a Xerox facility in Rochester. Roof construction crews were moving equipment across the top of the building with one of those Bobcat mini-bulldozers, and every time they passed by, the ceiling tiles shook and pieces of debris fell into the cubicles. Xerox employees looked skyward, muttering prayers to their gods and cursing the ubiquitous posters that proclaimed this procedure "perfectly safe, despite the disturbances."

The room was freezing. The only heat source was a small vent near the doorway that produced a lot of noise but no obvious heat. The floor was orange tile of the type you would put down on an outdoor patio. A dozen folding chairs were placed haphazardly throughout the room, facing a television dating from the Ford administration. Perched atop this television was a large VCR from the 1980's, probably a BetaMax. As I surveyed the surroundings, my fellow classmates arrived.

I have never, I would conclude five hours later, seen such a pack of whipped dogs in my life.

I went to traffic school expecting five hours of dull but potentially useful instruction on the rules of the road. I'll admit, you see, that it's possible I've forgotten things they taught us in Driver Ed in high school. But that's not what I got out of traffic school. No, what I got was five hours of DMV propaganda that would have done A Clockwork Orange proud. And I got it surrounded by people without spines: Boneless Chickens who smiled and nodded while swallowing mindless tripe.

The course materials themselves were pretty humorous. We saw several videos dating from the early 1980's: Driving after drinking is bad, driving while drowsy is bad, breaking up with your girlfriend while talking on your cellular phone and drinking Jack Daniels is bad. The tape began with propaganda from NYSP proclaiming it a superb program, featuring "group facilitation dynamics" and "state of the art multimedia presentations." The multimedia presentation consisted of the badly-tracked video full of people with Early Eighties Hair. The group facilitation consisted of an instruction in our course booklet to break into small groups, which we didn't do.

The course booklet was laced with subtle attempts to get us to answer as NYSP wished. I haven't seen so many hints at the desired outcome since the touchy-feely management-meets-sociology course I took as a senior in college. Short-essay questions included the following:

Do you feel the laws that exist now are enough to deal with the alcohol problem?

Do you think the traffic court system is fair?

What would happen if there were no police, courts, or judges?

"It would be complete anarchy," a middle-aged woman stated proudly, pleased when "instructor" Smith beamed at her for giving the correct answer. The poor woman had previously revealed that she'd received a speeding ticket for going four miles an hour above the limit. "I was guilty," she blubbered, throwing herself on our mercies. "I pleaded guilty and mailed it in."

It was then that we got into our discussion of what would happen if there were no police. Smith obviously wanted to drive home the point -- as emphasized in his DMV materials -- that the police are there for our safety. They don't give us tickets to raise money for the State. They give us tickets to keep us safe and happy. It was then that Smith tried to help us see this by discussing police, and I made my "speeding" comment.

"Let's be honest," I said. "The police don't follow the laws that they enforce." I went on to explain that the traffic court system wasn't fair or consistent at all, since the outcome you get -- and the license points you receive -- are directly related to how much time and money you spend on fighting a ticket.

Winston frowned. I wasn't going with the program. I wasn't bowing to the heavily-browed Big Brother DMV image he no doubt believes is peering over his shoulder every moment of every day.

"Why do you care what the police are doing?" Winston scolded, chuckling. "I think the police should have carte blanche. They do a dangerous job, and you couldn't pay me enough to pull someone over who might shoot me. As far as I'm concerned, the police can do whatever they want."

I writhed in my chair, my Libertarian ideals screaming inside my skull. Winston went on to say that the police were just ordinary people, some good, some bad. And he wants these ordinary people to do be able to do whatever they want. As if that weren't bad enough, he told us this wonderful story when we discussed the dangers of DWI:

It seems Winston knows this sweet little little old man who got caught driving with a Blood Alcohol Content of around .06, right on the fringes of being legally impaired. The cops who caught the sweet little old man arrested him. One cop was nice; the other cop grabbed the old man, pushed him roughly into the police car, and cut the old man's forehead while manhandling him.

"I would think he'd have a real case against them," one of my classmates commented. (This man fascinated me the entire time he sat nearby. He was wearing the worst rug I have ever seen on a human being: a jet-black piece of acrylic fabric that I first took to be some sort of close-fitting Old Man Hat.)

Winston frowned again. "Oh, no, he didn't pursue that, though he was certainly taken by surprise," he told us. "I mean, come on, you could have a perfect record for twenty years, and then just have a bad day. Cops are people, too."

Capping his monologue on DWI, Winston was indignant: "Air bags cost 1800 dollars to install, but a breathalyzer costs only 500," he said. "Why don't all cars come with breathalyzers installed to keep people from driving drunk?"

Because air bags were mandated by the Federal Government, you clown, said that little voice inside my head.

Eventually, my five hours of DMV Indoctrination Hell ended. We were encouraged to fill out course evaluations of the class and the instructor. The evaluation was on the reverse side of the registration sheet -- the sheet containing our full names, addresses, and Driver's License ID numbers. I had a choice: tell this fascist tool what I thought of him and his Statist indifference to violations of my civil rights, or do my best to make sure he didn't conveniently lose my paperwork. I could be a wolf. Or could be a whipped dog, like my classmates.

Name one bad habit you have that this course will help change.

I will be less hasty.

What did you think of the course instructor?

A great guy! Friendly and informative.