Cheap car insurance rates

Reader question:

For what period of time is your auto insurance company able to use a driving ticket against you before you can get cheap car insurance rates?

Alle

Thank you for your question, Alle.

I would say that this all depends on the company that you are with and also on how bad of a ticket you have gotten. Really, though, there are laws in place to prevent abuse of good drivers who have made simple mistakes, and so in most states if you get your first car insurance rate changing ticket, it will be forgiven until you get your second traffic ticket, at which point your car insurance rates will augment a little bit, sometimes a lot. For states that do not have this law, I would suggest that you check with your individual vehicle insurance company to see what their policy on ticket and accident forgiveness is.

In order to find out the policy in your state, you can easily go to your state’s department of insurance website and look up the information online. If it is your second traffic violation and ends up on your car insurance record, then if it is a minor one you will probably not see your car insurance rates go up for a long period of time. Normally, the cut off is about six months from the date of the issuing of the citation. However, if you have something really serious such as a speeding ticket or a drunk driving ticket, or something that causes your license to be suspended, then you will probably end up paying much higher rates for an extended period of time. With a drunk driving offense, you will have to file SR22 auto insurance and this will cost more, plus the rise for losing your good driver car insurance rate status.

The best way to avoid these rises from cheap car insurance rates is to avoid the situation in the first place. Keep a good distance from the vehicle in front of you, stay within the speed limit or at least conform to the pack, and always have a designated driver.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.