Traffic school for commercial drivers

Commercially licensed drivers are eligible to attend traffic school provided they  were not cited while driving a commercial vehicle.

Commercial driver’s licenses follow different rules under state and federal law. Because of this, the DMV cannot automatically apply traffic school to a CDL holder’s record—even if the ticket was received in a personal (non-commercial) vehicle.

Instead, the Mandatory Actions Unit (MAU) must manually review the case to:

• Confirm the violation was not in a commercial vehicle

• Verify the driver was eligible for traffic school

• Confirm the court approved traffic school

• Verify the driver completed traffic school

Once MAU confirms all of this, they can determine how the violation will appear on the CDL holder’s record.

Federal law prohibits improper “masking” of commercial violations, so the DMV handles these manually to stay compliant.

Bottom line: A CDL holder must contact the Mandatory Actions Unit because traffic school will not process automatically, and DMV needs to manually verify eligibility before adjusting the violation on the driving record.

URGENT STEP for commercial drivers

After attending traffic school, commercial drivers must contact the DMV Mandatory Actions Unit to inform them that they have completed traffic school and request that the point count to be reduced to a zero point count on their driving record.  Due to privacy regulations, the traffic school cannot make this request for you.

****Please contact the Oakland Driver Safety at tel. (916) 657-6525 approximately 10 days after finishing the traffic school course.

Benefits of attending traffic school

The benefit of attending traffic school as an eligible commercial driver is that the negligent operator point is shown on driving record as zero count.

Furthermore.  Federal regulations prevent the masking of violations for commercially licensed drivers.   This means that, even by attending traffic school, the violation will remain on the driving record as with all class license drivers.  Your insurance company and employers may be able to act on the information viewed on your record.

Additional information

If you have ever applied for, previously been or are currently a commercial driver, you must indicate the class license(s) on the Traffic School Application.  You too will be categorized as a commercial driver and will need to take the urgent step below.

We provide three options for completing traffic school: Online, Home Study or In-Classroom.