The Ticket File

Editorial Policy

How The Ticket File researches, writes, fact-checks and corrects its pages on tickets, points and SR-22 filings, and the rules every page follows.

The Ticket File’s pages are written to be accurate, useful, calm and fair to drivers, officers, courts and DMVs alike, and honest about where each rule comes from and what a page cannot know. This page sets out how that works and where its limits are.

This page is general information about the law, not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney. Traffic, license and SR-22 rules vary by state and change. The court’s or the DMV’s own letter controls.

How a page is made

  1. Research. We start from the statute and the administrative code in official text, the DMV’s, court’s and insurance department’s own pages, and federal law, and note what they do and do not settle.
  2. Writing. A draft is written from that research under The Ticket File name.
  3. Fact-check. A separate check compares every point value, threshold, window, suspension length, course limit, filing term, fee and date with its source, and reworks every sum.
  4. Graphics. Charts and diagrams repeat figures from the text and add no new facts. Every rule in a graphic shows its section and read date. No graphic shows a date for a reader’s own suspension or filing.
  5. Final review. A last read looks for errors, gaps and anything that could read as a verdict on someone’s own ticket. If it finds a serious problem, the page is fixed and reviewed again. We do not publish a page with a serious problem still open.

Each page ends with the date its statutes and rules were checked. No process catches everything, so please tell us if you find a mistake.

Primary sources and read dates

Every rule, point value, threshold, window, suspension length, course limit, SR-22 or FR-44 term, fee and date links to a primary source at the claim, with its section and the date we read it: the state statute or administrative code in official text, the state agency’s or court’s own page for process and fees, the eCFR, the US Code on govinfo.gov, the Federal Register, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and the compact texts as a state adopted them. A state rule reaches a page only if we read it there. If we can’t confirm something, we leave it out, or the table says “not confirmed” and links the state’s DMV or code. Our how we check page explains how each kind of fact is handled, and sources we use lists them.

Law firm pages, ticket apps, traffic schools, insurers, SR-22 agencies, quote and comparison sites and look-alike DMV sites are never a source, not for a rule, a figure or a statement. Claims we see repeated elsewhere appear only as claims we have checked against the text, without naming who made them.

Rules for every page

  • A clear note near the top. Every page says it is general information about the law, not legal advice and not a substitute for the advice of an attorney, that the rules vary by state and change, and that the court’s or the DMV’s own letter controls.
  • No national rule that doesn’t exist. There is no national point system, SR-22 rule or traffic-school rule. We give the federal frame where there is one, then only the state rows we have read.
  • Section and read date on every state figure, in text, tables, tools and graphics.
  • Three kinds of “how long”, kept apart: the window in which points count toward a suspension, how long a ticket shows on the record, and any rule that lets points drop or count for less.
  • No verdicts. Pages and tools never say you will be suspended, how many points your ticket will add, when your license will be suspended, how long you need a filing, what a ticket will cost you, or whether you will win. They show the statute’s own schedule, threshold and window, and say that the court’s or the DMV’s letter controls.
  • No advice on what to do with your ticket. We never say whether to pay, plead, contest, take a course, ask for supervision, a deferral or a prayer for judgment, request a hearing or hire a lawyer, and never tell anyone to ignore a ticket. Pages explain what each choice means in the law as written.
  • No tactics, no templates. We give no tactics for beating a ticket beyond the process the court itself describes, and no letter, plea or hearing-request template or generator. Forms are linked at the court or the agency.
  • Insurance only as the law states it. SR-22 and FR-44 pages explain the filing, the DMV’s fees and what the law lets insurers do. No premium figures, no industry percentages, no insurer named, quoted or ranked. A percentage appears only where a statute, a rule, a state insurance department or a state rate bureau sets or publishes it, labelled as theirs.
  • Lawyers. Where a page explains when people usually involve a lawyer, it points to the court’s self-help center and the state bar’s own referral service, named as the bar’s. No lawyer, firm or directory is ever named.
  • Nothing that looks like a payment page. State pages link the state’s official payment or court look-up page, labelled “official”. We take no payments and look up no one’s record.
  • Drunk or drugged driving only as a cause. It appears only where it leads to points, a suspension, an SR-22 or FR-44, or a commercial license disqualification. We publish nothing on its penalties, defenses or testing.

What we do not claim

  • We are not a law firm, and nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship.
  • We do not claim to have handled the tickets, hearings or cases we describe.
  • We do not invent authors, quotes, reader stories, case results or comments.
  • We do not rank or recommend lawyers, traffic schools, courses, ticket apps, insurers or SR-22 agencies, and we do not call anyone “best”.
  • Photos are stock images chosen to illustrate a topic. They show no real stop, ticket, court case or person we know of, and no legible plate, citation or license number.

Fairness

People reading these pages are often worried about their job, their insurance or getting to work. We write plainly, without drama, and without casting officers, courts, DMVs or insurers as villains. Where the law is unsettled, or a state’s text is silent, we say so and don’t pick an answer. Sometimes the honest answer is that the court or the DMV decides.

Tools

Our tools show a state’s rule as written, with its section and read date, and do plain arithmetic on what you enter. Each formula is tested against answers worked out by hand from the statute before it goes live. They never give a verdict, a suspension date, a filing end date, a fine for your ticket or an insurance price.

Rechecks and corrections

State rows are rechecked every three months and after each state’s legislative session, on the schedule set out on our how we check page, and sooner when we learn a source has changed. A page shows an updated date only when its content really changed. Errors are fixed and recorded on our corrections page.

Advertising and independence

Display advertising pays for this site. The ad network chooses the ads, not us, an ad is not a recommendation, and advertisers have no say over what we publish. We use no affiliate links, accept no paid placements, sell no leads, make no lawyer referrals, sell no insurance or courses and offer no quotes or rankings. Our about page has more on how the site works.