What Tickets Don’t Affect Insurance?
One common question that often comes up when it comes to car insurance is whether every ticket results in increased insurance premiums. While certain violations such as DUIs and reckless driving almost always increase insurance rates, there are other types of tickets that may not necessarily affect your insurance rates. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at what tickets don’t affect insurance and why.
What Tickets Can Increase Insurance Premiums?
Before we dive into what tickets don’t affect insurance, it’s essential to recognize which tickets can lead to higher premiums. These typically include serious violations such as DUIs, reckless driving, and speeding. However, there are other types of tickets that can also result in an insurance premium increase, including:- Careless driving- Leaving the scene of an accident – Running a red light or stop sign- Driving without a license or insurance
What Tickets Don’t Affect Insurance?
While many violations can lead to higher insurance premiums, there are some types of tickets that may not cause your rates to go up. Some of these include:1. Parking Tickets: Although parking tickets are a frustrating expense, they won’t impact your insurance rates. As long as the ticket doesn’t result in other legal issues such as suspending your license, parking tickets won’t affect your car insurance. 2. Fix-it Tickets: Fix-it tickets refer to minor vehicle violations such as a broken headlight or tail light. Since these don’t pose a significant risk to others, they tend not to result in higher insurance premiums.3. Failure to Carry Proof of Insurance: While driving without insurance is an offense in most states, being ticketed for not having proof of insurance is a minor issue. While you may need to pay a fine, it won’t usually result in an insurance rate increase.4. Speeding Tickets for Minor Infractions: While speeding tickets often lead to insurance rate increases, minor infractions such as going five or ten miles over the speed limit may not result in higher premiums.5. Non-moving Violations: This category of violations covers issues such as an expired registration or a broken windshield. Since these are non-moving violations and don’t pose a significant threat to other drivers, they generally won’t result in an insurance rate increase.
Why Don’t These Tickets Affect Insurance?
The above-mentioned types of tickets don’t always affect car insurance rates because the tickets themselves aren’t necessarily an indicator of increased risk. Insurers generally take into account the severity of the violation and the level of risk posed by the driver when determining to increase insurance rates. Thus, if you get a fix-it ticket or have a minor speeding infraction, it’s unlikely that your driving behavior is considered a higher risk to the insurer.
Final Thoughts
While some types of tickets can indeed raise insurance premiums, many others do not necessarily impact rates. Parking tickets, fix-it tickets, and other minor infractions usually won’t cause a rise in premiums. However, it’s always a good idea to drive safely and avoid getting tickets whenever possible. Staying ticket-free could help you avoid insurance rate increases down the road. Hopefully, this information has been helpful in illustrating what tickets don’t affect insurance and why.
