Handling a Hawaii Ticket When Traffic School Is Not an Option

First, the honest answer about traffic school

On the Judiciary's traffic pages, a moving infraction has exactly three possible answers: pay it, fight it, or accept it and explain. A class in exchange for dismissal is not on that menu, and nothing on the state's official sites offers to erase a ticket once you finish a course.

Classes do show up, but on the other side of the ledger. The Judiciary names required attendance at a driving class or educational program as one sanction a judge may impose. Think of it as part of the sentence, never as a way out of one.

Before you answer: is it an infraction or a crime?

The everyday tickets, like going over the limit, rolling through a stop sign, no seat belt, or a safety check sticker that ran out, are civil infractions. Nobody goes to jail for them, and they never appear as criminal history.

A smaller group of offenses are crimes: no license, DUI, reckless driving, and no insurance once you have already been caught before. Those mean standing before a judge on the date on your paperwork, and skipping it can get a bench warrant issued.

Within 21 days: choosing your answer

Three weeks from the date on the ticket is all you get. Let it slide and the court is free to decide against you by default.

Fighting it and losing, whether at a hearing or on paper, opens one more door: a trial de novo, meaning the case is heard again from scratch. You must ask for it within 30 days, and this time a prosecutor carries the burden of proving the infraction more likely than not. Accepting the ticket with an explanation is the opposite. Whatever the judge decides there is final, with no appeal.

• Pay the amount printed on the ticket
• Contest it, at a hearing or by letter
• Accept it and give the judge the background, at a hearing or by letter

If money is tight

Can't afford the fine? Tell the court. The Judiciary says a judge can weigh what you are able to pay and then either cut the amount or let you do community service instead.

What you must not do is ignore a default. Small judgments ($500 and under) are handed to a collector 90 days after they are entered and bigger ones at 180 days, and from then on the court no longer accepts your payment.

If a judge orders retraining

Hawaii did use points once. A 2008 House bill, HB2560, explains in its findings that the system was dropped in 1997 to move traffic cases faster. That history is why you will not see Hawaii courses promising to take points off.

What replaced points is judicial review. HRS 286-128 lets a district judge who sees a pile of violations in a single 12 month stretch, enough to show you do not take safety seriously, summon you, go through your record and send you to retraining with an approved instructor or school. Not in the courtroom when it happens? A certified letter arrives, and from then you have 15 days to report.

Ignoring either the summons or the class is an offense of its own. It can cost you as much as $100, as long as a year without a license, or both. The classes themselves are taught on each island by the Judiciary's Division of Driver Education, which is funded by a charge added to every moving violation conviction.

If the charge is excessive speeding

HRS 291C-105 sets two triggers: 30 mph or more above the posted limit, or 80 mph or more on any road. Either one is a petty misdemeanor, probation is not an option, and you go to court rather than settling it online.

Penalties for a first conviction stack up: a fine somewhere between $500 and $1,000, thirty days without a license, required retraining, an assessment by driver education, and a choice of 36 community service hours or 48 hours to five days behind bars. Get a third conviction inside five years and it becomes a full misdemeanor, with 30 days of jail time and a 90 day to six month revocation.

After the case: your traffic abstract

The Judiciary frames traffic penalties as money, service hours and classes. Its pages say nothing about a license point system or a course to reduce points. For a clear answer on how a particular conviction touches your license, call the District Court or your county DMV.

Your history is still written down. Under HRS 287-3, both alleged moving violations and convictions go on your traffic abstract, and the Judiciary says that record is for sale to any member of the public. A copy is $20, either over the counter at a District Court or through the mail paid by money order or cashier's check. There is also a traffic court report that adds parking and equipment cases; only the named driver can get it, and only in person.

Special cases: teens, CDL holders and employers

A teen on a provisional license has more at stake. HDOT's brochure says a first conviction for a driving offense means a 6-month suspension or revocation, and a second means losing the license for a year. Even an open case that might end in suspension freezes the teen's next step up, permit to provisional or provisional to full, so deal with it right away.

Commercial drivers cannot have anything hidden. 49 CFR 384.226 forbids states from masking or diverting a conviction away from a CDL record, and that holds when you were driving your own car. Separately, 49 CFR 383.31 makes you notify your employer in writing within 30 days of any conviction that is not for parking.

Hawaii's only statewide driver improvement mandate falls on employers, not individual drivers. HRS 286-202.5 says a company must give a yearly program to staff who drive vehicles rated above 10,000 pounds gross. HDOT's Motor Vehicle Safety Office signs off on those programs and figures on roughly 10 hours a year for each driver, including at least 8 hours of yearly safety training, which an 8-hour defensive driving class often fills. None of this affects a ticket you got in your own car.

If you want a course for insurance

Nothing in Hawaii's licensing or court material obliges an insurer to cut your rate because you took defensive driving. That is left entirely to the company.

So call before you buy. Ask whether that specific online course is one your insurer recognizes, and how much it would knock off. Keep the certificate somewhere safe; insurers sometimes ask for proof when the policy renews.