Paying Your Traffic Ticket

Got traffic tickets? You've got trouble. With more advanced information-sharing systems, even out-of-state tickets can fly home to Texas to haunt you. Similarly, tickets earned in Texas can also impact your insurance and your driving privileges―in Texas as well as in other states. It's a small, small world.

How to Pay

How you can pay your traffic ticket varies from county to county in Texas, and sometimes even from town to town. The ticket itself will usually tell you how you can pay it, or you can contact the court directly to find out your options. The court will be listed on the citation.

Virtually all courts and offices take personal checks; some may take credit or debit cards too. Some offices may not be equipped to handle cash, and some might require a cashier's check or money order instead of a personal check, so be sure to find out in advance. A quick phone call should do the trick.

If you don't pay your ticket by the date listed on the ticket, the fines increase, sometimes doubling instantly. A neglected or forgotten ticket can provide a nasty surprise later on, and most courts don't take well to "Oops!" as a defense.

In some cases the ticket will indicate either that you may contest the ticket by appearing in court―or that paying a fine isn't an option and you have to appear in court. If a court appearance is part of the plan, you must show up at the time, date, and location indicated on your citation. Failure to appear can result in the judge issuing a bench warrant for your arrest.

If you are under 18, you will usually have to appear with your parents to take care of any ticket you have received if you're going to court.

Some towns and counties offer you the convenience of simply paying your traffic ticket online. Since each jurisdiction handles things differently, you'll need to contact the court in the location where the ticket was issued to find out whether this is an option.

As an example of how some locations' online ticket payment systems work, you can poke around the services offered by College Station and Irving. Unless your ticket was received in one of these municipalities, of course, you will not be able to use these systems to pay your own traffic ticket.

Defensive Driving Schools

For many traffic tickets received in Texas, with the permission of the court you can attend a defensive driving school. For a fee, these schools will offer training designed to make you a better driver. Generally, you can attend a defensive driving course to eradicate one ticket per year, but this is always at the discretion of the court.

To be eligible to take this route, you'll usually be required to plead either "no contest" or "guilty" for the ticket. After all, part of a jurisdiction's incentive for offering to forgive one ticket is that you will take up less time in court fighting it.

If your ticket was received outside your home county, you might be able to request that you be allowed to attend a school in your home county, or even an online school. On the other hand, if you've been to traffic school too many times, the court might refuse to let you attend again.

When to Fight a Traffic Ticket

How you choose to respond to a traffic ticket could depend in part on how many points you've already accumulated on your driver's license. Even a minor violation might be worth fighting if a conviction will put you over the six-point limit needed to trigger expensive annual surcharges.

Alternatively, if this would be your third ticket, it could cause your insurance rates to go up faster than a helium balloon.

You might want to contact an attorney before paying your ticket if:

• Your latest violation will put you over six points in a year and make you subject to a surcharge.

• Your latest violation will put you over four moving violations in a year and designate you as a habitual violator, resulting in your license being suspended.

• Your latest citation will mean that you have paid three or more tickets in a year, allowing your insurance company to cancel you if they wish. Under Texas law, an insurer can't raise your rates simply for paying tickets, but they can choose to no longer insure you at the end of your policy term.

Here's how you earn points on your license in Texas:

• Moving violation: 2 points

• Moving violation resulting in an accident: 3 points