Boring and necessary. Those two words basically sum up traffic school in Florida. Let’s bypass a discussion of the boring aspect of traffic school and delve into why it is necessary. To begin, traffic school in Florida is only available for civil infractions. Civil infractions include: speeding tickets, careless driving tickets, a citation for failure to change lanes and other moving violations that typically do not require you to make a court appearance.

Assuming you are eligible, the benefit of taking a traffic school class to avoid points on your driving record should be a no brainer. Many courses are available online and you can get a list of approved courses from the

Need some convincing on why points are a very bad thing to have on your driving record? Here you go!

• Your insurance rates will go up. Simply put, points do not make you a winner in the driving game.
• You may lose your safe driver status
• The state can also suspend your license if you accumulate a certain amount of points within a time period. For instance, a basic moving violation is 3 points in Florida. If you accumulate 12 points in 12 months then your license will be suspended for 30 days. The length of suspension just goes up the more points you have. And points can really rack up fast if you are guilty of a criminal traffic violation like reckless driving.

In addition to the basic safe driving ciriculum a traffic school course will go over, one additional item to take away from the course is to not do it again! At least not within the same twelve month period. Otherwise eligible drivers for traffic school are limited to choosing this option if they have not already done within the last twelve months. Additionally, you can only elect to take a traffic school course (when you are otherwise eligible) five times in your lifetime.

Unfortunately, some drivers no longer have the luxury of removing points on their license by attending traffic school. If you have a Class A, B or C license in your back pocket then you are considered a commercial driver by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and not eligible to attend class. It does seem somewhat counterintuitive that the drivers that need to drive in order to get their paycheck are the same people that are not eligible to elect traffic school to take points off their record for moving violations. For those of your reading this that fall into the commercial driver category, there are still others ways to keep your record clean.

Keeping points off your driving record is important if you want to keep driving. Get in touch with the attorneys at Finebloom & Haenel P.A. to learn more about how to correct moving violations and keep your driving record as clean as possible today.