Scam Alert: NSC Defensive Driving Course

Apparently this scam has been running for a while now. In MA, this scam has even infiltrated the State government and is actually mandatory for anyone who has "5 or more surchargeable offenses in a 3 year period". While it is impressive that this apparent sham organization with very suspect generic name "National Safety Council" has actually received a state mandate, it is still a scam.

Let's delve into the details of this scam.

This scam is in the form of a class. The class costs $100 for 8 hours of "instruction". Anyone can take the class, but it is mandated for "problem drivers". This is the first place where we can see the scam nature of the class: "Problem Drivers" includes people who have:

• Not renewed their license on time (how often do you check yours?)
• Not renewed their Registration on time (ditto?)
• Failed to have registration in the car (an outdated requirement from before the police could look it up from their cruiser... which they have to do anyway to see if it was revoked)
• Had a single incident with multiple offenses (as each counts as one, even for a single incident)

The course content is laughable at best. Not once was SIPDE (Scan Identify Predict Decide Execute... a mnemonic taught by real driving safety courses) or anything like it mentioned. Instead we were treated to a mandated "8 hour" course, that was about 3 hours of course material packed between breaks, and various attempts that the instructor made to slow his teaching down and not finish too early.

The class features a mumbo-jumbo "personality profile" (a favorite of scammers everywhere), based on a short quiz. It then went on to describe, without any talk of studies being done or pointing to a bibliography, the features and pitfalls of their imaginary personality profiles.

After this, we watched a few ridiculous videos to show examples of "Effective, Short Term, and Ineffective" thinking. This asks the "student" to use the skill of watching small actions (like people changing lanes, or going through stops signs), and then asks them to jump to wild conclusions about what the driver must be thinking, and then to rate their assessment of their wild assumptions about what the other person is thinking.

The entire video bit was an exercise in ineffective thinking: namely jumping to wild conclusions about other peoples thought processes based on the minutia of how they drive their car. This is exactly the sort of thinking that people use when they get mad about being cut off, because they KNOW the other person saw them, all they have done is replace "asshole" with "ineffective thinker!".

All in all, this is an ineffective program, that wastes time, and doesn't teach anything useful. It is a scam, and I recommend avoiding this one. If you are looking to voluntarily take a driving course, take one that actually teaches driving. I highly recommend the Motorcycle Safety Foundation courses (which actually teach SIPDE and evasive maneuvering, and actual effective thinking).

If you have received a letter from the RMV, then I would say just grin and bear it.... and write your Representatives about canceling this horrible program.