Reader question:
What are the costs of getting a speeding ticket on your car insurance? And getting more than one?
Louise
Great question.
It’s well known that speeding tickets wreak havoc on your car insurance rates, and each one comes with yet another heightened premium and your insuranc provider looking at you disapprovingly over the rims of his glasses. A lot of times, these tickets can be fixed so that they have no effect on you at all, at least in the long run, but if you let them get away from you, they will end up costing you much more in car insurance than they did for the actual fines and court fees.
With your first speeding ticket, you might not see much of a difference in your insurance premium. You’ll generally still have your good driver’s discount, and while you may be on the edge, car insuranc companies seem to think that you get at least two chances, so while you should do everything you can to wipe that first ticket off your record, you don’t need to be panicking. You could, however, see an increase of about 20%.
With your second ticket, though, things start to get drastic. You’ll see a 40% raise on your premium and, if you had a good driver’s discount before, you’ll lose it. Consider the number 40%. That’s a whole lot. If you had a $574 premium before, you’re now looking at $1071. That’s almost double. In some cases, this raise may make your premium cost more than your car, and you’ll have to cut down to the state minimum just to get by.
With the third, things get really interesting. You’re now paying 63% more than you were at first, which means the guy with the $574 premium is paying $1,247, more than twice what he used to pay. Beginning to see the pattern? After three years have passed, he’s paying about two grand total more than he used to, and that’s way more than the $200 ticket he got slapped with in the first place. It just isn’t worth it.
Cheers,
Fashun Guadarrama.