• Your driving record.

Your driving record shouldn’t be as hard to maintain as people make it out to be. It actually is not that difficult to stay safe on the road, and all you really need to do is go the speed limit or do something just as good, keep your car insurance card on you at all times, and practice defensive driving to avoid accidents.

This is where the different kinds of discounts you get really start to interrelate, starting with this and that defensive driving course. If you think about it, one of the easiest ways to ruin your driving record is with an at fault accident or with a speeding or DUI ticket. Now, more at fault accidents can be avoided than currently are. When many people think of an at fault accident, they are thinking of things like running a stop sign or a red light and plowing into someone, but in most cases it’s a lot more ambiguous than that.

Did you know that the widest spread type of at fault accident involves the at fault driver plowing into the back of the other driver’s vehicle? This is the easiest kind of accident to get into, because it mostly happens when you aren’t paying attention to other drives. People think that the way to avoid an accident is to go the speed limit and watch out for other cars in their rear view mirrors, but there’s danger in the car in front of you as well.

The best way to avoid a rear at fault accident is to practice defensive driving rule number one: keep at least three seconds behind the car in front of you, and five seconds in bad weather. Yeah, people may honk at you and tell you to close the gap, but your car insurance rates are the ones that will go up if you rear end somebody. If you follow these rules and the person in front of you hits the brakes, then you will have plenty of time to stop safely without hitting them. If you hit them, it will be considered your fault because you did not keep a safe distance behind.

• Your credit report.

Keeping your credit report clean is easier said than done, but this can save you thousands of dollars throughout your life, and not just on car insurance. People with good credit reports get better interest rates on their loans, and end up paying thousands of dollars less than others for expensive things like cars and houses. People with bad credit reports end up paying way more.

Your car insurance company says that credit reports correlate to driving ability. People with bad credit reports file more claims, they say, than people with good ones. So having a good one is one of the biggest factors in getting a good high performance car insurance price.

I live in Kansas, and I wanted it to know if it’s likely that my employer will still cover me with commercial car insurance while I’m doing business, even though I have an SR22 form for drunk driving?

Nick

That’s a great question, Nick.

First of all, I find it very unlikely that you would even be able to be hired by a job for which you are required to do any more than a completely negligible amount of driving for a good, long time after you were required to file your first SR22 form after a drunk driving conviction. The most common number that I could throw out is ten years, although in many cases a company that requires driving will not hire you ever again after you have been convicted for drunk driving, especially, for example, a trucking job. There is already a big problem with the lack of safety among commercial vehicles on the roads, so employers are more cautious, at least in this area.

Secondly, as to whether or not your employer will insure you if you have an SR22 form filed, I really doubt it. It is possible that this could happen, but it would be entirely the decision of your boss or whoever is in charge of this aspect of your job. If your employer allows you to drive for business reasons under their own vehicle insurance policy, then they are taking on a substantial amount of risk. This could result in a rise in vehicle insurance premiums in the company, and could thus cause problems with your employment.

I would suggest that if you do find yourself in this situation, the best option for you, and most likely the only option that you have available, is for you to go and get a non owners car insurance policy. These types of policies are widely available, cheaper than normal, and will cover any car that you drive but do not own. It would be the perfect option for driving for business reasons if you have an SR22 form, or even if you don’t and your employer simply does not provide insurance.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.