My experience with the The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council

On May 7, 2009, shortly after I got home from my vacation in Arizona, I phoned the Arizona Chapter National Safety Council to discuss my taking the four hour on-line driving safety course they offer. I had received a ticket for “imprudent and unreasonable speed” (too slow) when vacationing in Arizona. This course would keep that moving violation from impacting my insurance. The course has to be completed 10 days in advance of the court date. My court date was May 20, 2009. The Fredonia Arizona Court had put me in touch with the Arizona Chapter National Safety Council.

The woman on the line at The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council told me there was no way I could complete the course by May 10, but that I could get an extension. “How do I get an extension?” “Just a minute.” She came back to the phone in about the time it would take to call the Fredonia Courthouse and said, “Your new Court Date is June 19.”

The next day I formally applied online. According to the website of

The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council the $210 course fee includes “complementary checking” of the 10 lines of information in this application before they email the key permitting one to log onto the online course. One faxes or mails a copy of one's citation and one's driver's license, so this would be the material that The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council would use to look for application errors. My citation said my court date was May 20. My application said the court date was June 19. The Arizona Chapter emailed me my key. I took the course. I suspect they do zero “complementary checking.”

At the end of May I got a scary letter from the Fredonia Court saying I had missed my May 20 Court Date and I was in a lot of hot water! I phoned the Court. They had no record of my Court Date being changed! I called The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council. They categorically denied that they had ever given me a new date of June 19. Yes they had it in their computer that the date was June 19, but I had given them that date.

So I would advise another in my situation to immediately phone The Court to directly check that a Court Date was really changed on your behalf. Even if the Court confirms the change on the phone, get it in writing. It was foolish of me to just have a citation saying my court Date was May 20, and no written document saying it was changed. I thought for $56 fines maybe extensions were that easy to arrange on the telephone by a quaisi official parner of the court. I was naïve.

Somehow I overcame that difficulty without losing my driver's license (the sanction the letter threatened if I did not pay $96 immediately). My court date now really was June 19.

I finished the course the last weekend of May, took the written exam in front of a notary public on June 2, 2009, and mailed the notarized exam first class. I got my certificate, dated June 8, on June 10. My certificate says “This Document is Void if Reproduced” (which is strange. Does that mean I have to hand-carry it to my insurance company, should there be a mistake and my offence appear on my insurance?? I hope it does not come to that). Obviously I cannot send my one and only copy to the court. Anyway, I know from all the time I spent reading up on this course that my last responsibility was mailing or faxing the notarized exam.

June 22 I got a check for $107 from the court, which is their portion of the $210 course fee. They were rejecting my course because they had not gotten any notification that I had taken and passed the course! And since the course was in lieu of my original $56 fine, I owed that and it was now late so I owed $96 instead of $56.

After another round of phone calls to the Fredonia Court and The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council, and writing a two page letter to the Judge, and returning the $107 check, I was able to get the Judge to accept my course. He said I should not have to suffer from the administrative failings of The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council. Indeed!

I learned that the Court has to have the “Course Passed” info seven days in advance of the defendant's court date. And we know the The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council needs course-takers to have everything completed ten days in advance. So in that little window of time 7-10 days before your court date, you need to call the court to see if the The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council sent over your certificate yet. And if they have not call the The Arizona Chapter National Safety Council to push them. I called them on a Friday when I first heard my certificate was missing. On Tuesday the Court still had not received it!

It would not hurt to ask for a receipt once the court says on the telephone they got the certificate. You have no idea how frustrating it is to be told later that they never said on the telephone what you know they did say.

Birding Arizona and Utah
Eva's Home Page

Last revised: July 1, 2009