Teen auto insurance

andrew bailey : Do speeding ticket raise my car insurance premium?
Do speeding tickets raise my car insurance premium?

In the age of electronic databases and the Internet, we can safely say that tickets in other states will affect how much you pay for car insurance. That may not have been true 20 or 30 years ago, when states did not share data with one another, but things have changed dramatically as technology has advanced. Today it’s nearly impossible to get a ticket in another state without your car insurance company learning about it.

Finding online car insurance quotes for a new policy, or to replace the existing one, starts when you enter your zip code in the box above.

Fortunately, many insurance companies won’t raise rates for a single ticket within a two- to three-year window. So if you get a speeding ticket while you’re traveling home from a family vacation, you probably have nothing to worry about just as long as your record is otherwise clean.

But if you incur another ticket or file an accident claim within the next three years, that speeding ticket will probably come back to haunt you. You have to check specifically with your insurance company for details on how they handle individual tickets.

It’s no secret that state motor vehicle departments share data through Internet interconnectivity. When it comes to out-of-state tickets, your insurance company can easily find out as well by simply requesting driver histories from multiple states. According to the state of Oregon’s Insurance Division, car insurance companies in that state can order driving histories from any number of other states in which customers might be driving.

With data so readily available, you can easily see why it is so difficult to hide traffic violations in other states. By the same token, it’s also nearly impossible to avoid paying a ticket from another state, even though that was common back in the days before data-sharing technology.

That’s important to know because an unpaid ticket will show up on your driving record and cost you even more in higher premiums. And if you were to get caught in the state where you received your ticket you could also possibly face jail time and very stiff fines.

Your insurance company is concerned about all tickets regardless of where you get them. Georgia State University’s Center for Risk Management explains why in its set of personal auto insurance FAQs by citing the fact that insurance companies use an army of actuaries and statisticians to determine the likelihood an individual will have an accident. Statistics have proven time and again that someone who gets a traffic ticket is more likely to have an accident within the next three years than someone with a clean record.

Since statistics play such a vital role in determining insurance rates, they must take into account all tickets regardless of where you receive them. Some might even argue that a ticket in another state is cause for even more concern given the fact that most drivers tend to be more cautious in states with which they are unfamiliar. This lack of caution while driving out of state may be an indicator of more risky behavior when that driver returns home.

It’s difficult to say precisely how long a given ticket will stay on your record because each state handles things differently. But, as a general rule, tickets for minor infractions will usually be discharged within one to three years. More serious violations, such as speeding, could be on your record for three to five years. Finally, the most serious violations of all could be five to seven years, depending on the nature of the violation and your previous history.

If you want to know for sure, your best bet is to contact the state where you receive the ticket. That state’s department of motor vehicles or insurance division should be able to tell you how long the ticket will stay on your record and whether or not there’s anything you can do to shorten that time.

You also might want to contact your insurance company to find out whether or not its policies in terms of recording tickets matches that of the state where you got the ticket. It would be rather inconvenient if the state dropped the ticket after two years while your insurance company held onto it for three.

Whether you have out-of-state tickets or not, you can search online for the better car insurance rates by entering your ZIP code above.
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Teen auto insurance

Teen auto insurance

Speeding vs cheap car insurance.

For all car lovers, travel lovers and cheap car insurance hunters, here is a good story which I read on the internet and thought I should share with you.

Yes, this is a bit out of the way for “Teen auto insurance” and car insurance but since it relates to speeding, and the holiday season approaching, it would be something new and interesting at the same time relevant to talk to. You need to be carfeful of speeding since if you are spedding during the holidays you will certainly bump up the meter on your car insurance and it would be difficult for you to get cheap car insurance.

Randolph, Mo., is a tiny town with a common problem: money is tight.To keep afloat, the Kansas City outpost apparently did what many little towns on big highways do. It came to rely on passing motorists filling its municipal coffers one traffic ticket at a time.

The problem came last year when, 15 years after Missouri passed a law capping certain ticket collections at 35 percent of a town’s revenue, the state decided to actually enforce the law.

It’s unclear why state auditors suddenly opened the town’s books, but upon doing so they discovered that Randolph–population 47–had collected more than three-quarters of its $270,000 budget the year before from traffic fines issued on state and federal roads. By law, money that exceeds the 35 percent limit must be turned over to county schools.

An even greater chunk of change doesn’t go toward any public good–city or otherwise. That’s the hundreds of thousands of dollars those motorists will collectively pay to auto insurance  companies, which almost always raise premiums for ticketed drivers.

A driver with one speeding ticket might pay an additional 20 percent or more for the three to six years the ticket remains on his record, an analysis by Insurance.com found. Multiple tickets could add thousands of dollars to a driver’s insurance charges.

With towns across the country grasping for funding in recent years, and with the situation only expected to worsen, drivers may want to proceed through all ‘burbs with extreme caution. Individual officers may concentrate on public safety, but the data show that departments tend to increase the number of tickets issued during hard times.

One analysis even calculated an average dollar-to-destitutioncorrelation. A 2006 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that towns increased the number of tickets issued by an average of 0.4 percent for every 1 percent decline in other revenue.

Concerned drivers can, however, take heart in a smattering of laws intended to prevent towns from treating traffic tickets as a revenue stream.

At least three states now limit the amount of income a town can collect from traffic tickets, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Arkansas and Missouri cap the overall percentage of a town’s budget gleaned from state and federal highways at 30 percent and 35 percent, respectively. New York state prohibits a town’s ticket revenue from exceeding the equivalent of $5 per resident, with any excess going to the state’s general fund.

Other states appear to be joining the mix. Oklahoma can strip the ticketing powers on state and federal highways from a town that has generated more than 50 percent of its revenue from traffic fines. Vermont and Louisiana are among other states that have introduced similar legislation.

Texas has capped ticket revenue since 1975. During a 1989 revision, the Patton Village police chief became so outraged at the bad press his town received–Patton Village was essentially funding itself through Highway 50 speeders–that he went on a hunger strike, limiting himself to “coffee, water and an occasional beer,” the Dallas Morning News reported at the time.

At least Patton Village did not go bankrupt as a result, a fate that befell tiny Macks Creek, Mo., after that state’s law was put into effect in 1995. The town, nearly 85 percent funded by passing motorists, had issued a ticket to the wrong driver–one with the right connections. That driver was a state legislator, and he promptly went home and drafted what is now known as Macks Creek Law, the legislation that caps the percentage of a town’s budget gleaned from state and federal highways at 35 percent.

These days, several other states try to discourage any abuse of police powers by essentially minding the treasure chest. Certain traffic tickets–typically including speeding violations on highways–are automatically processed by the state, which then returns a set amount to the issuing town.

In California, for example, towns keep about 20 percent of the driver’s fine for speeding. In Connecticut, towns get just $10 a ticket. The state of Massachusetts keeps about half of the portion of the fine that exceeds $50.

“It seems to work,” says Robert Katims, a lawyer with Hoff Curtis, in Burlington, Vt. “There is no incentive for people to set up speed traps because they don’t keep the money. The money goes to the state.”

But beware the holes in any system. The National Motorists Association, a drivers’ rights group, cautions that because some tickets don’t get routed through the state, an officer merely has to rephrase the violation a bit.

The full fine then goes directly to the city or town and the baffled driver, initially pulled over for speeding, heads home with a citation for, say, inattentive driving.

“Some city administrators game the system by having their police write tickets for local ordinance violations rather than for speeding, in order to avoid mandatory reporting to the state,” says Gary Biller, motorist association spokesperson.

This hoiliday season you need to remember that its best not to speed and get a speeding ticket- the economy is not good and you still want to have your cheap car insurance right? Get your cheap car insurance here -grab your teen auto insurance quote or auto insurance quote now.  

Teen auto insurance

Teen auto insurance

Car insurance and speeding tickets.

Texas is a long way across, and the state allows speed limits of up to 85 mph on its most remote stretches of highway. The Texas Highway Patrol last year wrote 3,726 citations for drivers traveling a speed of 100 mph or more.

In July, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety ticketed 21 motorists for driving more than 100 mph. One driver was going 135 mph.

More than 300 drivers in Chicago clocked in at 40 mph or more over the posted limit in 2010.

We are a nation with a heavy right foot. But some of us have feet made of lead.

Not all speeding tickets are created equal. The heavier that lead foot gets, the more severe the consequences. In such cases, your speeding fine will be the least of your worries.

Get tapped for a 100-mph ticket, and in many states you’ll automatically face a reckless driving charge. Several states levy hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in administrative fees and penalties.

And your insurer will react exactly as you’d expect: with a dramatic increase in your car insurance rates .

Speed increases the distance a vehicle travels before its driver can react to an emergency, and it increases the distance needed to stop once a driver can hit the brakes. And it greatly increases the amount of energy released in a collision. When impact speeds rise from 40 mph to 60 mph–an increase of 50 percent–the force generated increases by 125 percent, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).

Speeding was a factor in 31 percent of motor vehicle crash deaths in 2009, the IIHS says. That’s 10,591 deaths related to speed.

It would be impossible to tell you how much any given ticket might cost you. It varies with the laws of the state, the jurisdiction within the state and even the mood of the specific officer who pulled you over.

In most states, the fee associated with a speeding ticket increases in proportion with the degree to which you are exceeding the speed limit.

At the low end, there is great tolerance. For instance, you may get off with a warning or a small fine if you’re driving 52 in a 45 mph zone. Texas won’t put any points on your license for infractions less than 10 percent over the speed limit, and insurers generally don’t penalize you for a single minor violation.

Of course, it also matters where you speed. Keep yourself in check in school zones and construction zones, or expect hefty fines.

On the upper reaches of your speedometer, your wallet becomes fair game.

Georgia last year passed a law targeting “super speeders.” Who is a super speeder? Anyone caught driving more than 75 mph on a two-lane road or 85 mph on a freeway. Those drivers get to pay an additional $200 on top of the speeding ticket fine (which can reach $1,000 all by itself). Tennessee is reportedly considering a similar law.

At a certain point, you’re not getting a ticket for speeding anymore.

In California, if a driver is caught at a speed above 100 mph, the infraction becomes a misdemeanor and possibly a reckless driving citation, says Pete Moraga, spokesman for the Insurance Information Network of California. Being caught at that speed also results in an automatic suspension of the driver’s license for up to 30 days, a stiff fine and 2 points on the driver’s record. Four points in 12 months will also result in suspension.

Speeds that are de facto reckless driving include:

Over 80 mph in Virginia, North Carolina and HawaiiOver 85 mph in Oregon, Connecticut and ArizonaOver 100 mph in Minnesota and California.

Other states look at how much you’re over the posted limit before labeling you reckless, ranging from 15 mph over the limit in Arkansas to 36 mph over in North Dakota.

In all states, your license can be suspended or revoked if you have enough points on your record or the offenses are severe enough. Some states up the ante by charging drivers with bad records an annual “driver responsibility fee.”

At least four states–Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Texas–charge an annual fee to drivers with excessive points. In Michigan, drivers face yearly fees that range from $100 a year for seven moving-violation points to $1,000 a year for a DUI. Other states’ programs are structured similarly.

Then there’s the issue of being tossed in jail: Half of the states allow for jail time for speeding, with the maximum sentence ranging from three days in Nebraska and Washington, D.C., all the way up to a year in many others. In general, jail time is completely up to the judge in any particular case.

The nature of the offense determines the impact on your car insurance coverage, says Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association.

“A higher-speed ticket often includes additional charges, such as reckless driving, that also carry higher points,” she says. The citation “will likely affect your insurance premium and could even result in you losing your insurance, particularly with a preferred company that may consider you too high a risk.”

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the cost of speed-related crashes is more than $40 billion each year.

To get an idea of what a Dukes of Hazzard-quality ticket does to your car insurance  premiums, we ran insurance quotes for a 23-year-old male driving a 2011 Honda CR-Z, comparing rates for drivers with no violations to rates for drivers with a single speeding ticket for 20 mph or more over the limit.

We also ran quotes adding a prior violation, assuming that if you just got busted for 100-mph-plus, it’s probably not your first rodeo.

A single violation 20 mph or more over the limit is enough to move the needle in all five states we sampled, with increases in rates ranging from 14 percent to 44 percent. If we add a previous minor speeding violation to the mix, the jump is even more emphatic. A sample rate in Middleton, Ohio, went from $1,136 a year to $1,592, an increase of 40 percent. In Biloxi, Miss., the sample rate went from $1,918 to $3,014 a year, up 57 percent. This is just an estimation based on our information gathering.

Get your cheap teen auto insurance quote now.

 

 

Teen auto insurance

Teen auto insurance

Speeding? When to hire a lawyer? Find out if its worth it.

Maybe you had to be somewhere in a hurry. Maybe you were daydreaming. Or maybe you just like to drive fast. Real fast.

But you ended up with an expensive speeding ticket. And if it was your second or third infraction, your car insurance rates  could rise dramatically.

Is it time to call a lawyer?

The cost of an additional traffic violation on your driving record could be several thousand dollars over the next few years. A lawyer might cost a fraction of that, sure, but the outcome is far from certain.

“Most speeding tickets and traffic charges are difficult to beat,” says Warren Redlich, who runs a law firm in Albany, N.Y. “The police usually do a good job, and most defendants are guilty. Still, the police sometimes slip up.”

The best outcome, of course, is outright dismissal of the charge. But a lawyer who knows the ropes can find the levers that could result in a lesser charge, a plea bargain to a nonmoving violation, or probation.

Consider the stakes as well as your likelihood of winning, says Redlich.

“The main reason (to challenge a ticket) is if you already have several points,” Redlich says. “Also, if your job requires a clean license, it may be cost-effective.”

What’s at stake? A lot

A speeding ticket falls into the “moving violation” category, which also includes DUIs or DWIs, careless or reckless driving, running red lights and stop signs, and fleeing from the police.

First-time speeders have options such as going to traffic school to remove from their records the points associated with a violation.. Many states offer this solution, with some even providing classes online. (Your state’s department of motor vehicles  can give details.)

But recurring speeders could have their license suspended or even revoked by the court, especially if an accident or injury is involved. Fines can also be high, sometimes in the hundreds of dollars, depending on the conviction and length of your motor-vehicle record. Some states layer fees on top of fines: Georgia’s “Super Speeder” law levies a $200 fee on anyone caught doing more than 85 mph, and Michigan demands a “driver responsibility fee” of at least $100 for those with multiple violations.

All violations are financially painful, as shown by a report from Insurance.com.

By studying 32,000 car insurance policies bought in 2010, the report found that premiums jumped 18 percent with a confirmed one-time conviction. The increases get more dramatic from there: with two convictions, the rate jumps 34 percent (from a national average of $1,119 to $1,497) and by 53 percent (to $1,713 a year) with three.

Certainly, the more you currently pay for car insurance, the more multiple convictions will cost you.

Robert Passmore, a spokesperson for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, says the penalties are reasonable because insurers face higher risks when they cover repeat speeders or those with numerous other moving violations.

So, a lawyer helps how?

Experienced traffic lawyers spend their days in court, which means they know two things you don’t: the technicalities and the system.

Speeders are ticketed for the obvious reasons: They can hurt themselves and others. But those policing you are human, and despite extensive training and experience, can make mistakes. The lawyers know where to look for weaknesses.

“Winning your case depends on several things, including whether your speed was recorded by camera, radar gun or other devices,” says Amir Soleimanian, who likes to go by “Mr. Ticket” and heads law firms in Los Angeles and San Diego. “Also, the weather and road conditions are very important.”

An ongoing relationship with the court system is just as much an advantage.

Andrew Flusche, a traffic attorney from Fredericksburg, Va., recommends finding a lawyer who regularly handles cases in the courthouse where your case is scheduled. You want someone who knows all the local players, including judges and district attorneys, to get the best outcome possible.

“Even within the court, the case can differ a lot depending on the prosecutor that’s working on your file and … the judge that your case will be going before,” says Flusche.

What to ask a lawyer about costs

Do you charge by the hour or a flat fee?What is your rate?What does the rate cover? Not cover?How and when do you expect payment?

The cost of representation varies widely. Redlich, for instance, charges a flat fee of $500, while The Ticket Clinic, a firm operating in Florida and California, says it typically charges $150 to $250 per case.

In bigger cities where there may be many lawyers competing for business, some may charge as little as $75.

If you’re on the fence about cost, consider getting auto insurance quotes,  either from your agent or online, that reflect the additional ticket. (Your insurer won’t levy any surcharge until the conviction actually appears on your motor vehicle record.)

This are just views and hence it would be best to get legal help, this is to provide you with an idea.

 

Teen auto insurance

Teen auto insurance

Eric Schmidt: Would the insurance company cancel my sons auto insurance policy for speeding or speeding tickets? What should I do?

Speeding and speeding tickets lead to high teen car insurance rates or even cancellation of auto insurance

Response : Speeding is dangerous and this is a known fact. This is one of the main reason why the teen auto insurance rates are very high for this age group. The teenage group like to speed. As per the surrvey conducted by Allstate last year, teenage girls are now indulging in speeding and distracted driving compared to boys. Speeding is a leading casue of fatality for this age group. Please stay tunned on this blog if you are interested in statastics since this is what I intend to give you in the forth comming post.

If you have too many tickets, or claims the insurance company may refuse to renew your policy, or they can put you into Facility Rating. “Facility Rating” means high risk insurance rates of thousands of dollars per year, for at least three years, or until you have a clean record. Your sons car insurance policy will not be cancelled immediately, but the renewal would be refused. This is when you would have problems.

It is worth fighting a speeding ticket, just to save the car insurance premium cost, or to get your teen car insurance renewal.

Any insurance agent or insurance advisor, would recommond that you contest the speeding ticket in court of law, since this is going to save you thousands of dollars in insurance. Especially teen car insurance, since the cost of teen car insurance is high and the added cost of being a high risk on account of speeding is going to cost you even higher teen car insurance premiums.

Please ignore the cost written on the speeding ticket and weigh it against the cost of fighting for the speeding ticket? It is worth it when you consider the insurance implications could cost you hundreds and hundreds of dollars more.

Insurance rates do not go up or down by twenty or thirty dollars per year, they increase by hundreds or thousands of dollars. Not just for one year but for up to six years.

At most times the police officer give the driver a “break” by dropping the speeding ticket down to just a fine of fifty dollars or less, with no demerit points. This would not mean that if you get a break from the officer your teen car insurance or auto insurance rates will not be affected.

The truth is that insurance companies do not count or care about demerit points. Your insurance company counts “convictions”. If you pay a speeding ticket, even one with a small fine on it, your insurance company will put a strike against your insurance rate. Each ticket except for a parking ticket is goind to increase your car insurance rate. The best strategy is not to indulge in speeding or to fight every speeding ticket to keep your driving record clean. Ofcouse qualified people will do much better in the court than you can do and so this might be a good idea.

What other due diligencies can be done to stop speeding and for teenage safety or best car insurance rates

Teenage safety is a great and big concern, more than even teen car insurance or getting best car insurance rates. These are the folllwing measures you can take for your teenage driver :
1) It might be a good idea not to let the teenager drive a sports cars. Sprorts car speed smoothly and at this age it is difficult for a teenage to stop from trying a spin. It would be best to give him a normal car.
2) Guide the teen, be a role model and explain them the issues of speeding.
3) Insist that they pay their own teen car insurance, this way they would be more responsible and accountable and would stop speeding.
4) Enroll them for graduated driving lessons.
5) Compare teen car insurance quotes, you would get the best car insurance quotes.

Summary : Speeding tickets or speeding cars are to be avoided for any drivers especially aggressive drivers. Speeding tickets do not fly with insurance companies and are certainly going to increase car insurance rates. It is worth fighting a speeding ticket.

Teen auto insurance