Points that are placed on your Florida driver's license due to traffic violations stay on your record and are counted against you for 3 years for insurance purposes. Points can continue to accumulate on your record beyond those 3 years though so the state can keep track and impose penalties if necessary.

In Florida if you accumulate too many points within a certain time period, your license can be suspended or revoked. A Florida driver's license is automatically suspended for:

• 30 days if you receive 12 points within 12 months
• 3 months for 18 points within 18 months
• 1 year suspension for being assessed 24 points within 36 months

Also if you accumulate 3 major offenses or 15 minor offenses, for which you receive points, for within a 5 year period your Florida license can be revoked. If you have amassed this amount of points and offenses within 5 years you are termed by the FL Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (HSMV) to be a habitual traffic offender (HTO).

In computing points and suspensions, the offense dates of all convictions are used. Three points will be deducted from the driver record of any person whose driving privilege has been suspended only once under the point system and has been reinstated, if such person has complied with all other requirements.

When you receive certain types of moving violations in Florida you may elect to attend traffic school or a driver improvement class to keep points off your record. According to the HSMV the one benefit that come with this choice is that your insurance rates cannot go up, though if you have a safe driver discount your insurance company may choose to take this away.

Other benefits are that points are not added to your driver license record and the fine is reduced up to 18%. In Florida, you can only choose this option for moving violations 5 times in a lifetime and cannot have made this same election in the preceding 12 months.

To find out if there are other options of how to reduce points or if points are ever totally take off your Florida driving record contact the FL HSMV.