Should you take a driving improvement course before your Reckless Court date?
Fairfax County judges will not order people to complete a driver improvement class. This happens in many other jurisdictions in Virginia, but the volume of cases handled by the Fairfax court makes monitoring completion unfeasible. Instead you can take the class on your own, either before or after court. This may make sense in some cases, in others it can actually have a negative impact.
The biggest reasons to take a class are to improve your driving record demerit point balance and to show the judge that you are taking the matter seriously.
In order to know whether you should take a class you first need to know how the Virginia demerit point system works and also your personal point balance.
In Virginia, all drivers start out with a zero point balance when they first get their drivers licenses. Every year that you drive without a ticket you get a positive point. Positive points are capped at 5, meaning a balance of +5 is considered a perfect score. Every time you are convicted of a driving violation (including tickets that you pay before court), you receive a reduction in the number of points associated with that ticket. (Review the DMV website for information about the demerit point value of various infractions.)
So for example, if you first received your license two years ago and have never gotten a ticket your score would be a +2. Typically any positive score is considered a good record. Then if you were convicted of Reckless Driving you would have your score reduced by the 6 points associated with reckless driving. Your new score would be a -4.
Completing an approved driver improvement course increases your score by 5 “good points”. This creates a strategy to when a driver should take the course.
Typically, drivers who already have positive point totals would be wise to wait until after court to take the course. Looking at the example above it is easy to see why this makes sense. A driver who is already at a +2 will only get 3 points out of the course, because the score is capped at +5. If they then received the 6 points for the Reckless Driving ticket, their final score would be a -1. However, if that same driver waited until after court to take the class, their final score would be a +1. (Started at +2, lost 6 points for the ticket to go to -4, and then got 5 points for the class to end up at a +1).
Additionally, taking a class before court can “camouflage” a good driving record. When the judge hears that a driver has a +5 record after taking a class, that could mean that they were anywhere from a 0 to a 5 before the class. However, when a judge hears that a driver is a +2 naturally and without the class, they know for certain that you have been a good driver.
While judges will almost certainly always take it into account that a driver is taking the matter seriously when they present evidence of completing a class, there is far more benefit in waiting until after court to take the class. Additionally, there is always the possibility that the matter will get dismissed or reduced to a zero point violation, in which case taking a course would be unnecessary.
For those reasons, we advise clients with good records to wait until after court to take driver improvement classes, if they still desire to do so.
However, the five point bump can be very helpful to clients who have negative point balances. Getting into the positive numbers can be very helpful.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THIS ADVISE IS LARGELY ONLY VALID IN FAIRFAX COUNTY. Other counties, such as Arlington and Prince William are set up to allow drivers to get their matters reduced or dismissed conditioned upon the successful completion of a driver improvement course. In those cases you are only eligible for those programs if you have not completed a class in the last two years.
Like most advice on the internet, nothing is applicable to every situation. If you are considering taking a class you should speak to a lawyer to learn the pros and cons before engaging in any program.
