How Speeding Tickets Affect My Insurance Rate?
A study done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has revealed that drivers who have received traffic tickets have a higher chance of being involved in an accident than those who have not.
Therefore, as per statistics, getting a traffic ticket makes you a high-risk driver in the eyes of insurance companies. As a result, your insurance premium may go up.
A ticket received for a traffic violation in one state follows you into another state. The ticket stays on your driving record for several years. Along with other factors such as age, gender, car and credit history, insurance companies also go through your driving record also to determine the insurance premium.
Getting a speeding ticket may not have an immediate effect on your insurance premium because insurance companies do not check your history every month. Checking your driving record costs the insurance company money. Therefore, it is not done very often. It is done either once every 3 months or once a year before the contract is renewed. If a speeding ticket is found on your record, the premium charges are likely to increase. Luckily, the rates return to normal at the end of 3 years.
Getting one ticket will not cause increase in your insurance premium as the law in most states prohibits insurance companies from raising the premiums after just one ticket. However, if you get many in a short span of time, your car insurance rate will go up with every subsequent one.
Every company follows a specific procedure for raising the premiums. Some of them may consider the seriousness of your violation while others may raise it by a specific amount every time you get a ticket.
In fact, receiving a number of tickets or being involved in several accidents can cause you to lose your insurance entirely. You become too much of a risk to be sustainable by insurance companies and they may even consider canceling an existing insurance policy.
However, there are some ways to get a speeding ticket off your record. In most states, there are driving improvement programs or classes you can attend to improve and demonstrate good and safe driving skills. It’s possible then to erase those tickets from your record following completion of the course. You can also contest the ticket in court if you believe it shouldn't have been issued. This keeps the ticket from showing up on your driving record when obtaining your car insurance coverage. You can also plead down your ticket to a non moving violation. For a non-serious violation, many state departments will do this.
A clean driving record can get you discounts of up to 20% or more from insurance companies. This can result in substantial savings. However, the benefits of discount will not be noticeable if your insurance provider learns about new speeding ticket or other driving offences.