Arizona makes the question obsolete. There are no points to remove because, done right, the points never happen and neither does anything else.
Here's the machine. Arizona's Defensive Driving Program is a diversion program, run not by the MVD but by the Arizona Supreme Court, which certifies every school. Get an eligible ticket, complete a certified course before your deadline, and the citation is dismissed. Not reduced, not masked, not credited against. Dismissed, with no points assessed and nothing reported for insurers to see. California hides the conviction; Texas erases the charge after a plea. Arizona intercepts the whole thing before it becomes anything. It's the cleanest version of this mechanism in the United States.
The program's demands in exchange are mostly about the calendar. You can use it once every 12 months, measured violation date to violation date. And the deadline that matters isn't your court date, it's 7 days before your court date, which is when your course must be complete. Arizona drivers lose this program to that one-week buffer constantly, because they diarize the court date and start the course the weekend before. Count back seven days, then give yourself margin. Your school transmits your completion to the court electronically within 24 hours, so the follow-through is automatic once you finish; the finishing on time is entirely on you.
Eligibility is broad with sharp edges. Minor civil moving violations qualify. Violations from a collision involving serious injury or death don't. CDL holders, shut out entirely in most states, get a carve-out here: eligible as long as the violation happened in a non-commercial vehicle. The course itself is short by national standards, 4 to 4.5 hours by rule, though Arizona's pricing runs higher than most states, $45 to $150 in tuition before state and court fees, because the diversion fee structure rides along with the course.
And it's worth every dollar of that. Our Arizona data puts a typical 10-over ticket at a $231 fine and roughly $3,039 in three-year insurance exposure as a ceiling estimate. The diversion deletes both: the fine goes with the dismissed citation and the insurance exposure never materializes because there's no conviction to rate. Very few financial decisions return three thousand dollars for one afternoon, and Arizona hands it to eligible drivers once a year.
Every Arizona Supreme Court-certified online school we track is compared on the Arizona page.