A court ordered you to take a basic driver improvement course

Michigan has two different things that are both called a basic driver improvement course, and confusing them costs drivers money. One is the Secretary of State's own programme, which withholds points from a driving record. The other is a course a judge orders you to take. This page is about the second one.

Where the order comes from

MCL 257.602b(1) is the hands-free law: you may not hold or use a mobile electronic device while driving. Subsection (8) of the same section says that if a driver is responsible for 3 or more civil infractions under subsection (1) inside a 3-year period, "a court shall order the individual to complete a basic driver improvement course within a reasonable time as determined by the court."

Two details in that sentence matter. "Shall" means the judge does not have a choice about ordering it. And "within a reasonable time as determined by the court" means the deadline is whatever the judge sets, not a fixed statutory number. Read your order, or ask the clerk, and write the date down.

Subsection (8) also says it does not apply to a violation of subsection (2), which is the separate ban on hand-held devices in a commercial motor vehicle or a school bus. A commercial driver who is cited under subsection (2) is not the driver this rule is talking about.

The points still go on the record

This is the part that surprises people. MCL 257.320d(17) says a driver ordered by a court to complete the course must take it whether or not the driver is eligible under subsections (3) and (4), and then says the Secretary of State "shall enter the points required under section 320a for an individual who completes a court-ordered basic driver improvement course but is not otherwise eligible."

So a court-ordered course is not a way to keep points off a record. MCL 257.320d(1), the subsection that withholds points, says in its own last sentence that it "does not apply to an individual who completes a court-ordered basic driver improvement course as described in subsection (17)."

If the Secretary of State separately mailed you an eligibility notice for the points programme, that is a different process with its own 60-day clock, and it is the notice, not the court order, that starts it.

What to do with the order

Finish the course inside the time the judge set, and keep proof that you did. Send the completion certificate to whoever the order tells you to send it to. If the order is unclear about the deadline or about where proof goes, ask the court that issued it. Nobody else can tell you what a particular judge's order requires.