Make sure you follow the rules of the road this Summer! It seems that just one ticket could be enough for your auto insurance company to decide to raise the rate of your premiums. Be careful out there!
No one wants to be pulled over and issued a ticket by a police officer. This situation is always stressful. It can also be expensive! You could end up having to pay the full cost of the ticket. That one ticket could also, at least in some cases, cause your auto insurance company to raise the cost of your premiums. A traffic ticket affects more than you might think.
Insurance.com has a handy little thing on their website called the “Uh-Oh!” Calculator. It is an interactive tool that you can use to figure out how much a ticket could raise your car insurance rates. It has a scrolling wheel of reasons why a person could have been issued a ticket. Select one to find out the effect that would have on the person’s insurance rates. These answers are based on the national average of insurance rate increase for each, specific, type of ticket.
A ticket for “careless driving” can increase your auto insurance rates by 16.08%, (in general). A DWI, for a first offender, will raise your rates by 18.54%. If you got a ticket because you were speeding 1 to fourteen miles per hour over the limit, it can raise your insurance rates by 10.62%. What if you were going faster than that? A ticket for speeding 15-29 MPH over the limit can result in a 12.22% increase in your car insurance premium, and a ticket for speeding 30 or more miles per hour over the limit can raise your rates by 15.19%
It is all about risk. Insurers don’t like having to pay out on claims. They want to find customers who are low-risk. People who get speeding tickets, or tickets for careless driving, are seen as riskier than those who never get a ticket. Insurers are going to make you spend more on premiums if they believe that you are going to cost them more money than the average customer.
This Summer, as you are driving down the road, keep this in mind. That annoying driver who is trying to push his car into your trunk probably has a habit of tailgating, (or following the vehicle in front of him too closely). When he gets caught, and issued a ticket for it, his car insurance rates are going to go up by about 13.37%.
Image by Einar Jørgen Haraldseid on Flickr