Traffic 101 Review

Traffic101 was created in 2004, making this an older online traffic school. Unfortunately, this online traffic school has not been updated in quite some time, so we recommend the following alternatives:

Traffic 101 State Certifications

  • Green = Certified
  • Blue = Not Certified

Things We Like

Company Reputation: This company has over a decade of business history and has maintained positive online reviews. Other review sites and bloggers are surprisingly quiet about Traffic 101 with hardly any complaints or praise. This could be due to their decreased exposure since they are only state-certified in a handful of states. This online traffic school is also pretty outdated so it has become less popular over time.

Free To Try: Like all of our other TSC Certified online traffic schools, in most states, you can sign up for this course for free and they won’t even ask for any payment info. After about 10% of the course has been taken, they will ask for payment info, but you are not charged until you reach the end of the course. So there’s no risk at all to trying it out.

Free For Every 100th Customer: This will only affect 1 out of every 100 of you who sign up, but if you’re lucky enough, you just might get to take the course for free! This is the only course we’ve seen that offers free courses at random, but it’s a nice touch!

Simple Quizzes: We’re not quite sure how Traffic 101 gets away with it, but the in-course quizzes are so incredibly simple. They usually consist of 2 questions and you only need to get 1 right to move on. If you somehow manage to get both of them wrong, you just go look up the answer and take the quiz over again. This course is incredibly (and sometimes unbelievably) easy.

Easy To Use: This is a course that prides itself on being basic, straightforward, and simple. You won’t find silly cartoons, wacky graphics and animations, or even a single video. Traffic 101 is all text-based and they are one of the last remaining reputable companies to offer such a basic course. So if you’d like to forgo the fancy animations and videos, this is probably the course for you. Please note that this course does not work on mobile devices.

Last-Minute Expert: If your court date is due very soon, Traffic 101 can process your certification right away. Your certificate will be sent electronically to your court right after your course completion. Or if your court happens to require a paper certificate, they can process and forward your certificate the same day as long as you complete the course by 2 pm Pacific Standard Time. Traffic 101 also facilitates sending your certificate through regular mail, guaranteeing you’ll have them within a couple of days.

Great Customer and Technical Support: Online traffic schools have a bad rep for poor customer service. Traffic 101 is an exception. Their customer service line is open from 8 am-5 pm PST and is manned with knowledgeable and accommodating representatives, known to go the extra mile to help their customers. You can also contact their technical support anytime if you encounter problems with your account. Their technical support team is available 24/7 to keep their promise to not let you leave a message or talk to a machine. Or if you have any questions and inquiries you can shoot them an email and get a response within 24 hours, except weekends and holidays.

Things We Don’t Like

Very Boring: The simplicity of the course is nice, but because it’s 100% text-based, this is one of the most boring courses we have taken. This is where you might disagree with our star rating. If it wasn’t so darn boring, this course would easily receive a 5-star rating. We just found it so unbearably bland that we removed a star from the rating. In the 21st century, we much prefer videos, animations, and graphics to hold our interest. If you don’t have attention deficit disorders as we do, you may want to mentally give that 5th star back to this course!

Difficult To Retain Info: Traffic 101 is basically just a big ebook. Lots and lots of text with very few images and no videos or animations. If your goal is to actually learn and retain information, this is not the course for you.

Validation System: Most courts require online traffic schools to validate the identity of the person taking the course. They can do this through voice recognition, the use of webcams, or asking secret questions with a limited amount of time to answer. We’ve had a few complaints about the validation system with Traffic 101 not working correctly. However, we this is also where we’ve heard of people receiving some excellent customer service such as receiving free webcams and having the course fees refunded while still sending a certificate of completion.

Not Mobile Friendly: To be fair, this course does work on mobile devices, but it doesn’t work well at all. If you plan on taking your traffic school from a phone or tablet, this is not the best course to sign up with.

Course Timers: Unlike most online traffic schools where you can start and pause your course anytime, Traffic 101 requires you to spend a specific amount of time on each page before you can proceed. This can be an inconvenience since you don’t have the freedom and flexibility to take and complete the course at your own pace. 

Website Glitches: The website can sometimes be slow in loading pages, which can be annoying especially if you are in a hurry to finish the course. The site also throws error messages if it is your first time logging in. In addition, the website design is outdated. It’s somewhat hard to maneuver.

Pricing

Traffic 101 has remained competitive in their pricing, but surprisingly, they aren’t always the cheapest. We think they should be considering the simple text-based approach they take, but in some states, they are actually more expensive than their competitors who are using more interactive approaches to their traffic schools.

To help with the price difference, Traffic 101 has given us a discount link to pass along to our site’s visitors. You may use this discount link for 5% off.

The Bottom Line

Traffic 101 is a proven online traffic school with a solid history and a great reputation, especially for superior customer service (online traffic schools aren’t known for their great customer service). Our only major qualm with this school is how boring it is, combined with the higher pricing in some states. Overall, this school has received our 3-star rating.

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