September 4th, 2026 - 680 Pounds Of Beer Cans Somehow Made $20

This edition of Traffic School begins exactly where any responsible public-safety program should begin: with an extended investigation into the collapse of Kmart, the inflation-adjusted price of Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready pizza, the horrifying financial implications of diesel fuel, and the realization that a roll of Reynolds Wrap now costs enough money that aluminum foil has apparently become a precious metal. Lieutenant Crane is hanging out with Viktor, and the two immediately spiral into the economics of modern America, where a weekend road trip is now apparently a luxury reserved for oil sheiks and people who have discovered an abandoned refinery. Diesel prices have Viktor declaring that he is staying home, while Crane reveals his foolproof entrepreneurial strategy of drinking beer, crushing the cans, and selling the aluminum to finance more beer. This naturally evolves into Viktor discussing his attempt to stay off booze for the weekend, Crane suggesting that Viktor should simply move in with him and spend months becoming sober under police supervision, and Viktor proposing the much more reasonable strategy of hiding in his house with his cats, watching movies, drinking Mountain Dew, and refusing to encounter civilization. Once Traffic School officially begins, the show immediately becomes a public-service announcement wrapped inside a fever dream. With a holiday weekend approaching, listeners are encouraged to delay their departure long enough to call the program, because apparently camping spots will still exist several minutes later. The aluminum-can economy returns, complete with Crane's story about collecting 680 pounds of beer cans only to receive approximately $20.18 for his heroic labor, proving once and for all that capitalism has found a way to make physically transporting a small aluminum mountain somehow less profitable than simply leaving it in the garage. Then comes the first genuinely important warning of the episode: if you're planning on getting wild at a campground, remember that there may be cops camping nearby. They may not be wearing uniforms. They may be sitting in campers. They may be watching. The woods are no longer safe. The campground has become surveillance state: recreational edition. The first major traffic question concerns the subject that appears to have personally offended an entire generation of Idaho drivers: roundabouts. A listener asks how to properly navigate one, and Viktor essentially reduces the entire engineering achievement to, “Look left, and if it's clear, go,” while Crane dreams of creating a video in which Viktor is physically trapped inside a vehicle while Crane attacks a roundabout with enough enthusiasm to pin Viktor's face against the passenger window. The conversation then wanders into Idaho Falls road construction, a mysterious new South Boulevard roundabout, traffic studies, expanding roads, destroying everything standing beside them, and the general frustration of attempting to navigate a growing city without spontaneously developing a nervous twitch. The educational portion eventually establishes that drivers should use turn signals when appropriate, particularly when changing lanes or indicating their intentions, because the other people on the road may be spectacularly incapable of reading minds. Then the phones start ringing, and everything goes completely off the rails. One caller launches into an extremely enthusiastic complaint about an employee repeatedly arriving at work with beer cans falling out of her vehicle. Unfortunately, the caller deploys language that is far too spicy for terrestrial radio, forcing Viktor to frantically search for the dump button while apparently experiencing a near-fatal cardiac event. Crane jokes about needing to dispatch 911 because Viktor's heart has apparently stopped working, and the conversation becomes an accidental demonstration of why radio stations have emergency profanity buttons in the first place. The caller's daughter is also dragged into the situation, the dump button becomes a recurring character, and everyone seems increasingly concerned that the button has stopped lighting up. Meanwhile, Tractor Jeremy and Crazy Carl enter the picture, with the phone being passed around like a cursed artifact at a family reunion. Crazy Carl then delivers a photograph of Tractor Jeremy's tractor being pulled over by Bingham County law enforcement, although apparently this particular encounter occurred while they were doing something charitable. Crane grudgingly acknowledges that there are, in fact, some good cops, before Carl begins apologizing for the mysterious “Rexburg thing” from the previous week. Nobody can quite remember what the Rexburg thing was, Carl's medication apparently had not kicked in, and Viktor openly admits that conversations with Carl tend to evaporate from his brain the moment the call ends. Yet somehow, despite this, a future visit to the station is arranged, complete with shirts, prizes, gift cards, Peaches, and a firm request that nobody bring handcuffs. The whole sequence feels less like Traffic School and more like a loosely organized traveling circus that accidentally obtained a broadcast license. The educational segment resumes with a series of increasingly ridiculous questions, beginning with roundabout turn signals and escalating into Viktor's personal Star Wars-and-beer viewing habits. Crane wonders how Viktor has time to watch movies when he apparently spends half his existence in the bathroom, prompting Viktor to defend himself with the claim that he simply has a very large bladder and a conveniently located bathroom. From there, the show gets serious about holiday travel safety: check your tire pressure, inspect your tire tread, check antifreeze and oil, give your vehicle an overall once-over, and most importantly, put the phone down while driving. Grease Monkey receives a shout-out for vehicle service and its apparently dangerous supply of fresh-baked cookies, which Viktor claims he was only able to consume ten of before his vehicle was ready. The show then addresses one of humanity's most pressing traffic questions: Is it legal to bumper-push someone who refuses to move when the light turns green? The answer is essentially “please don't,” despite Viktor's initial wisecrack that it isn't illegal if nobody is watching. Crane explains that deliberately pushing another vehicle can create liability for following too closely and potentially cause damage, which Viktor has personally discovered through the extremely scientific research method of using his truck to push his daughter's disabled vehicle into a sloped parking lot. The conversation then mutates into an absolutely insane driver's-ed story about Crane's younger days, when an instructor allegedly explained that the purpose of old metal bumpers was to let people gently bump neighboring vehicles while parallel parking. Teenage boys, naturally, interpreted this as divine permission to repeatedly ram cars and apparently discovered that “bumpers are for bumping” is not actually a legally defensible driving philosophy. Next up: Why are freeway on-ramps so ridiculously long? The answer, thankfully, is not simply “to irritate Viktor,” even though that remains the unofficial emotional explanation. Crane explains that on-ramps provide space for drivers to accelerate to highway speed and merge without disrupting traffic, while off-ramps provide room to slow down. The important takeaway is that the accelerator pedal exists for a reason, and drivers should actually use it when merging rather than crawling toward the interst...