Speeding tickets are a real pain. Their cost usually hits your bank account really hard, but that’s not the worst thing about them. What’s really annoying about them is the fact that you continue to pay for that one speeding ticket even after you paid it.
Speeding tickets, or any other traffic tickets for that matter, also cause a lot of trouble for you with your insurance company. Once they find out that you got one, you can make sure that they’ll increase your insurance rates. How much will they go up? That question is hard to answer. It all depends on what you’re going to do after getting the ticket.
What you can do to lower your rates
So you got a speeding ticket and your insurance rates are about to go up. Worrying about this won’t help. What will help, however, is going back to school. Traffic school that is. If you take certain driving courses and learn how to become a safer driver, your insurance company will reward you with a discount. Insurers love it when their clients take defensive driving courses. You can take advantage of this to lower your rates.
And, remember, you can take defensive driving courses anytime. You don’t need to wait until you get a speeding ticket.
But you should also know that, if you complete traffic school to take care of a speeding ticket and you get another ticket a few months later, you won’t be able to do the same again. You can take another defensive driving course only after a certain amount of time.
Your insurer is not your enemy
It’s true that your insurance company is not always your friend, but it’s not your enemy either. In fact, they may be lenient the first time you get a speeding ticket. And, if you get just one ticket every several years, you don’t need to worry that it will increase your rates dramatically.
This doesn’t mean that speeding tickets should not worry you. They can end up costing you a lot, especially if you get a ticket and have an accident after a small period of time. This could add at least a couple of hundred dollars to your rates per year.
The best thing to do is to avoid getting tickets. So drive safe!
