If you’ve broken Florida’s traffic laws, you can often take traffic school to avoid the full legal and financial consequences resulting from the violation. Florida’s laws make extensive use of traffic school and can be used to ameliorate the fallout from a variety of traffic violations. The following tips will help you succeed with your Florida online traffic school experience.
Keeping your license: In some situations, you’ll have to pick between traffic school and losing your driver’s license. Florida’s laws mandate that a driver at fault in an accident where somebody was hospitalized must take traffic school or lose his or her license. Drivers also must attend traffic school if they’ve passed a stopped school bus, participated in highway racing as a driver or spectator, were caught driving recklessly, or ran a red light. In all these circumstances, Florida requires drivers to take online traffic school or lose their license.
Insurance rates and points: There are major benefits to taking traffic school. Drivers who are ticketed for a “non-criminal moving violation” can take an online traffic school course and avoid having points added to their driving record. This allows them to avoid seeing an increase in their insurance rates, although some people may see their insurance rates increase if they incur a second infraction within 18 months or a third infraction within 36 months, or if they are caught speeding by more than 15 mph. Some Floridians even take traffic school just to lower their insurance rates.
Eligibility to take Traffic School in Florida: It’s important to note that not everyone is eligible for traffic school in Florida. Drivers with commercial licenses letters A, B, or C aren’t eligible to take traffic school to avoid penalties. Moreover, you can’t take traffic school if you’ve already taken traffic school within the past 12 months. Not only that but you’re limited to taking traffic school five times in your life, no matter how long it has been since the last time you took traffic school. Florida is patient with traffic violators, but its patience is not inexhaustible.
How Long Do I Have to Take Traffic School: According to the FDHSMV’s website, the amount of time available in which to complete traffic school varies from between 60 and 90 days from the date that your ticket was issued (which is not the date that you’re given permission to take traffic school). It is important to keep track of time carefully, because if you took the full 30 days allowed to alert the court to your intention to take traffic school, you may have only 30 days remaining in which to complete your course. Check with the Clerk’s Office in the county where you were ticketed to see how long you have to complete traffic school.
Changing Your Mind or Failing to Complete Traffic School: The FDHSMV does not allow those who have signed up for traffic school to change their minds. You have to attend traffic school once you’ve signed up–you can’t elect to simply pay the fine. If you fail to attend traffic school, the court will automatically judge you guilty of breaking the law. You’ll have to pay the original traffic ticket, plus an additional $16 late fee and a $10 processing fee. However, the court will not levy an additional penalties or costs. Of course, points will be added to your record, just as they would have been if you hadn’t indicated you wanted to attend traffic school in the first place. Note that if you fail to attend traffic school, you still can’t take traffic school again for 12 months.
Use An Approved School: Only online traffic schools that are approved by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FDHSMV) are authorized to offer traffic schools in Florida. The FDHSMV approves the curricula of each online traffic school and maintains a complete list of authorized traffic schools on its website.
Approved Florida Traffic School Reviews: Here are three Florida traffic schools that have received excellent reviews.
MyImprov.com
MyImprov.com, which is the website for the Improv Traffic School, has an excellent record of training drivers. It started its operation in the mid-90s.
What sets it apart from other online traffic schools is that their course is co-written by comedians, allowing for a hilarious yet informative course. Its online traffic school is a laughingstock, but in a good way, as its courses are intentionally funny.
Their “edutainment” style of teaching is driven by their belief that it’s better to learn if you are having fun. This is also the reason why they always make sure that their students are entertained by using images, cartoons, and videos as supplements in their every lesson.
To prove how effective their approach to learning is, the FDHSMV has found that drivers who take courses from My Improv.com are in fewer accidents and are much less likely to receive another ticket.
iDriveSafely.com
Meanwhile, iDriveSafely has over 15 years of experience in providing online driver training. They are also one of the most frequently updated online traffic schools.
iDriveSafely offers a basic, but high-quality traffic school. Though its short clips are humorous at times, the focus at iDriveSafely.com isn’t humor but rather solid instruction from professional traffic instructors. It offers courses that are well-rounded and consist of both written and video portions. The text portion consists of easy-to-read chapters while their videos feature 3D animated characters that teach the fundamentals of safe driving.
GoToTrafficSchool.com
With over two decades of experience, GoToTrafficSchool has helped over four million students already.
Just like most online traffic schools, you can access their course across multiple devices, this means you’ll have more flexibility. They also save your progress automatically, allowing you to take a break if you want to and pick up right where you left off.
GoToTrafficSchool’s course is integrated with videos and animation that are essential factors that contribute to making more engaging content. This complements their straightforward teaching style perfectly. So guaranteed that this course is a perfect fit if you’re looking for just the right amount of visual and text.
However, you’ll need to purchase their unlimited test retries feature as an add-on (as well as other features such as read-along narration). But don’t worry if you don’t want to pay extra. Their test is very easy, so you’re more likely to pass on your first try out of the three attempts given to you.
Certificate of Completion: Florida does not accept paper certificates as proof that you completed an online driving course. Instead, the traffic school that distributed your traffic school course will electronically submit the appropriate paperwork once you’ve successfully concluded traffic school. You don’t need to do anything once you’ve finished, other than to check with the county clerk to verify that everything went through and was processed correctly. Some schools offer to sell you a paper certificate of completion, but the certificate is intended for your own use and isn’t required by the State of Florida.