Texas Defensive Driving by the Numbers (2019–2025)

Hundreds of thousands of Texans still dismiss traffic tickets with a state driving safety course every year — 304,934 tickets were dismissed this way in fiscal year 2025 alone. The market reset after 2019 and has since stabilized, and the course has moved almost entirely online.

We pulled the numbers from two official Texas datasets — the state's course-completion report and statewide court activity records — to answer the questions drivers actually ask: how many people take defensive driving, whether it's still worth it, and how Texans really handle their tickets. Every figure below is sourced and dated.

Course completions fell from 630,723 in 2019 to 411,791 in 2023 — about a 35% drop over four years — as fewer tickets were written and habits shifted after 2019. But the decline flattened: completions held essentially steady from 2021 to 2023.

On the court side, tickets dismissed after a driving safety course dropped from a 2019 peak, bottomed out around FY2023, and have since rebounded to 304,934 in FY2025. In other words, this isn't a dying option — it's a large, stable one.

If you're wondering whether the online course is legitimate, the whole state has already answered: online ("alternative delivery") courses grew from 87.6% of all completions in 2019 to 95.3% in 2023. Classroom completions collapsed from 78,058 to 19,466 — a 75% drop — while online stayed nearly flat.

The classroom isn't quite extinct, but it's close. For most drivers the practical choice is which online course to take, not whether to go online. We compare the formats in online vs in-person defensive driving.

Here's the gap the data exposes. Of every traffic case Texas justice and municipal courts disposed of in FY2024, about 40% were uncontested — the driver simply paid or pled — and roughly 9% ended in a conviction that stays on the record. Only 7.5% were dismissed through a driving safety course.

Paying a Texas ticket is a guilty plea, and the conviction sticks. A large number of those drivers were eligible to dismiss the charge instead and didn't. If you're deciding right now, read pay, fight, or dismiss your ticket before you pay anything.

Texas courts dismissed about 27.7% of all disposed traffic cases through "compliance" outcomes in FY2024 — cases where the driver did something (took a course, showed proof of insurance, completed deferred disposition) to earn the dismissal. Along with deferred disposition, the driving safety course is one of the two largest dismissal paths a driver controls — the course alone accounted for 294,534 dismissals in FY2024.

We map every dismissal path, with real volumes, in every way to get a Texas ticket dismissed.

Even as completions fell, the number of approved online providers grew from 83 in 2019 to 127 in 2023, while classroom providers shrank from 43 to 27. More schools are competing for a smaller pool of students, and the market is concentrated — roughly the top 5 providers account for about 60% of completions.

That crowding is exactly why "official-looking" affiliate sites have multiplied. If you're choosing a course, our guide to TDLR-approved courses explains how to tell a state-approved provider from a middleman.

Texas courts actually dismiss more tickets through deferred disposition than through a driving safety course — 495,109 vs 294,534 in FY2024 — and that gap has widened. But more volume doesn't make it the better choice for every driver.

We break down the trade-offs in defensive driving vs deferred disposition.

The data is clear: most Texans pay and convict themselves when many were eligible to dismiss. If you qualify, the online course keeps the ticket off your record for $28.