{"id":494,"date":"2010-05-27T13:47:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T19:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/?p=494"},"modified":"2012-08-31T14:44:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T20:44:00","slug":"texas-defensive-driving-should-you-just-pay-the-ticket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/texas-defensive-driving-should-you-just-pay-the-ticket\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Defensive Driving &#8211; Should you just pay the ticket?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img class=\"img_inset\" src=\"http:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/src\/images\/officer.jpg\" alt=\"Texas Highway Patrol officer writing ticket to driver who can take defensive driving course through DTA\" \/>Many people ask the question if they would be better off just paying the fine rather than taking a <a title=\"Texas defensive driving\" href=\"http:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/texas\/defensive-driving-tx.html\">Texas defensive driving<\/a> course (online or classroom).\u00a0 My answer to that question is that in most cases it is always best to keep your driver record clean if you have the option.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>So if you are not familiar with the process, in Texas when you get a traffic ticket, you will be given a court date which you must appear in person or contact the court on or before that date to either dispute the ticket or let them know if you plan to just pay the fine, take a driver safety course (a.k.a defensive driving), or take some other action.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/texas\/defensive-driving-tx.html\">Sign up for Texas defensive driving online<\/a><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"title_blue_sm\">Defensive Driving Courses Not That Expensive<\/h2>\n<p>Many people choose the defensive driving course option, but let&#8217;s see why this is probably the smartest choice.\u00a0 If you pay the fine, then that traffic citation will go onto your driver record.\u00a0 This is not a huge deal if you only have one ticket on your record, but if you are unfortunate enough to get multiple citations in short amount of time, or you were to be involved in a crash and you have tickets on your driver record, you can accumulate points that could trigger insurance premium increases or surcharges from the State.<\/p>\n<p>For this reason, I always advocate taking a Texas defensive driving course if eligible to keep your driver record clean.\u00a0 This way you are as far away as possible from ever experiencing these expensive premium increases or surcharges.\u00a0 It is also worth mentioning that in most cases, even though you will still be required to pay a court fee when you choose defensive driving to take care of your ticket, it is still usually less expensive than paying for the ticket.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For many folks, it is not about the money, it is more about the time.\u00a0\u00a0Since online courses are now approved in Texas,\u00a0this is less of an issue since the course is available 24 hours\u00a0a\u00a0day and\u00a0you can log in and out at your convenience\u00a0so that the course will fit into your schedule.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It is for this reason that everyone should check out a <a title=\"state approved Texas defensive driving online course\" href=\"http:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/texas\/defensive-driving-tx-approved.html\">state approved Texas defensive driving online course<\/a> option, such as the one offered by Driver Training Associates, Inc.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/texas\/defensive-driving-tx.html\">Sign up for Texas defensive driving online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Find out if you best option is to pay for your Texas traffic ticket or if you should take defensive driving.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,21],"tags":[35,122,34,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drivertrainingassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}