Alabama Traffic School: Turning a Ticket into a Dismissal

Before you request: who runs the system

The Alabama Traffic Service Center belongs to the state's Administrative Office of Courts. Its caseload is district court citations issued by deputies and state troopers, and its Online Traffic Resolution site lets you settle a ticket ahead of court, including asking the judge for permission to attend defensive driving school.

Most counties use it, large and small: Jefferson, Madison, Mobile, Montgomery, Baldwin, Shelby and Tuscaloosa are all on the list, and so is Fairhope Municipal Court. Not on the list? Check your county's page on the Traffic Service Center website, or call the circuit clerk's office.

Before you request: are you eligible?

Online requests require a current driver license, and it cannot be a CDL. Four counties do not offer defensive driving school at all according to the Traffic Service Center FAQ: Pike, Calhoun, Randolph and Bullock.

Every request is a judge's decision. Courts tend to weigh your recent driving history and what you were charged with, and DUI related charges are often excluded. City courts run their own programs; Orange Beach, for example, turns away CDL holders and closes the door once a guilty plea is entered.

When you fill in the form: the guilty plea wording

Paying a ticket ahead of court means pleading guilty and giving up a trial. This is printed on the reverse of citations issued by troopers and deputies. After payment, driving school is no longer possible.

Some counties still build a guilty plea into the request itself, and the dismissal follows once you finish the course. You can tell by the wording: if the option asks you to plead guilty while requesting permission for driving school, your county uses the plea first approach.

After approval: deadlines you must hit

An approval comes with a review date. If the course is not done by then, you have to be in court that day. Miss the deadline and the court date and you risk losing driving school entirely, with the case going to trial instead.

If you let the original court date pass without acting, the court may tack on a late fee, a warrant may go out, and ALEA may suspend your license. Madison County also warns that the fine can grow and any bond can be forfeited. To get driving privileges back, the circuit clerk has to send ALEA a clearance letter, and you pay reinstatement fees.

A worked example: a ticket written on March 3 might not appear online until about March 17. If the court date is April 10, you have a little over three weeks to submit the request, so check the site every few days rather than waiting.

If the ticket can simply be fixed

Some charges are cured with proof instead of a class. The website accepts uploads such as an insurance card, a valid license or tag registration, or a signed repair form confirming that broken equipment was fixed or tint was corrected. A judge can then dismiss the charge, with or without conditions.

Madison County, for instance, will dismiss a no insurance ticket if you show by the court date that the car was covered when you were stopped. It does not accept month to month policies for that purpose.

If you hold a CDL

CDL holders cannot use the online driving school request. FMCSA forbids states from masking a commercial driver's conviction, and a dismissal that follows a plea or payment counts as masking.

Know the serious offense rule too. Two serious traffic convictions in a three year span (tailgating, or speeding by 15 mph or more, are examples) mean a 60 day CDL disqualification from ALEA. A third means 120 days.