Do I need to live in the state where I got the ticket?

Traffic school is tied to the state that issued the citation, not the state on your driver's license. A citation received during a road trip means you take that state's approved course, even if you're a permanent resident somewhere else. The reverse is also true: if you live in one state but received a ticket while visiting a relative in another, the course you take is the one the issuing state has approved, not the one where you live. The certificate is then accepted by the issuing court, which reports the resolution back to your home state under the Driver License Compact.

Out-of-state residents sometimes face slightly different procedures — different election deadlines, mailed paper certificates instead of electronic reporting, or specific documentation the issuing court wants from non-residents. Those differences are operational, not eligibility. Our enrollment flow asks for the citation state first to make sure the course you receive is the right one for the court that matters. If you accidentally enrolled in your home-state course thinking that's what mattered, contact support immediately so we can switch you to the correct program before you start meaningful progress.

The Driver License Compact governs how driving records flow between states for most U.S. jurisdictions, which means the resolution from the issuing state typically appears on your home state record within a few weeks of completion. A handful of states aren't members of the Compact (notably a few that limit interstate record sharing), but for the vast majority of out-of-state cases, the home state record gets the same effective treatment as if the citation had been issued in-state. Drivers worried about how an out-of-state ticket affects their home record can usually relax — the resolution travels with the citation.