Any car insurance guru on here?

Question - I got a speeding ticket. 62 in a 40, but the cop wrote it for 49 in a 40. Paid the ticket and they gave me the info for traffic school. Its a online course 2 hours and 60 bucks.

However on the paperwork it says the ticket will show DISMISSED on my driving record and that they don't guarantee that the insurance company wont raise my rates.

The only reason i would do the traffic school is to keep my insurance rates from going up. Anyone in the insurance biz know would a Dismissed ticket cause my rates to go up??

Thanks for the info.

are you a male over 25? if so, this may help:

Just a wild guess from my experience, your insurance probably won't move at all. Unless you get in an accident or high risk ticket like reckless driving insurance companies don't tend to reassess their policies on a timely basis. The problem will arise when you try to switch companies, your quotes will likely be on the high side.

All tickets always say they can't guarantee anything about insurance rates.

I am actually an agent for Allstate here in Texas.

It is a difficult to say what is gonna happen in your specific situation, insurance companies make everything so difficult. Like Allstate has a lot of separate compnaies within what is known as Allstate. For example if you got a policy prior to 2008 then you most likely have one of our Classic or Access policies these would actually go up, at the end of the year when they re-run your driving history. Even if it was dismissed it would still show up on your driving record, therefore they would have a reason to raise it. Our newer policies would excuse this, and would not raise your rate for a ticket that has been excused. Our older policies prior to 2004, are the same. Now it all depends on who you are insured with. This is just an example of what Allstate does. Yet most other standard companies do the same like State farm, Geico, Farmers, etc...

This is why for some people when they get a ticket they get an increase, and for others (i.e. mosquitocontrols) does not.

Hope this helped, I would definetly call your agent or your company and find out for sure.

and you might think about slowing down - personally, I HATE it when some jerk is doing 60 in a 40....keep it to 45, maybe???

jus' sayin'

Hang Glider said:

and you might think about slowing down - personally, I HATE it when some jerk is doing 60 in a 40....keep it to 45, maybe???

jus' sayin'

Click to expand...

Well the street i was speeding on was a four lane road with a center divide that was just built. So basically its a "freeway" style road by the interstate that has nothing but fields around it. I was shocked the speed limit was 40.

I'm no insurance guru, I don't play one on TV and I don't even live in the same country as you do.

But whatever you do, argue the s*?% out of your raise if you do get one or change provider. I bought a 2004 Toyota Echo last year and my insurer decided that it would be fun to charge me three times as much. I was driving a crappy Saturn before, but there's no reason a 26 year old male should pay 1k a year to insure a car that is almost 7 years old. I talked to a manager who had the guts to tell me that it was on the "hot" list of stolen cars. Dude, the car isn't even made anymore and I'm a customer of 5 years with two cars and home insurance.

I called around and got better coverage at a better price in about 15 minutes.

There really is no way to answer this. All insurance companies are different in the way they handle these things and sometimes they even differ from one customer to another. I can say though that odds are if they do run your driving history again (most companies do at least every 2 years) then your rates will probably go up. There are many many different variables that could change that though.

I see you're in Utah. I used to manage a personal auto product for an insurance carrier in California. How it works out here is if you take traffic school then the violation won't appear on your motor vehicle record, as long as you haven't taken traffic school to remove a ticket in the prior 18 months. The last part is what gets so many people and I imagine it's the reason for the slight disclaimer on your paperwork. You can take traffic school after every single ticket, but if you had already taken it in the last 18 months then your insurance company can surcharge you for the speed. Again, that's CA, not UT.

I'm a senior underwriter for a P&C company in CA and the way it works here and i believe most states is a point system, ie speeding 1 pt DUI 7 points and based on this the company will adjust your rate. That said if you go to traffic school and the ticket is dismissed as long as it doesn't show up as a point there is no basis to charge you. Most companies run MVR's annually.