How Your Driving Record Impacts Your Insurance Rates

Before you purchase auto insurance, you should be aware of how your driving record impacts your insurance rates. It is the single most important consideration for most companies when it comes to insurability and determining your premiums. Other factors are used in the configuring of your auto insurance rates, and they can lessen or inflate the impact your driving record has, but it generally comes down to the driving record.

Here is a quick look at just how your driving record impacts your auto insurance rates.

Good Driving Record and Your Insurance Rates

Let's start with the good news first. A good driving record can qualify you for the lowest rates with any auto insurance company you are considering. There are other considerations of course, but if you have no traffic violations and no at-fault accidents you are in the driver's seat. Even with a couple of minor violations, you can still qualify for low rates, though you may have to rely on other factors as well to find the cheapest rates available.

Bad Driving Record and Your Insurance Rates

If you have a checkered driving record, you will be hard pressed to find cheap auto insurance rates. A few blemishes are not generally a problem, but many tickets or a reckless driving ticket, an at-fault accident or a dreaded DUI and you can kiss low rates goodbye for quite a few years. While it depends greatly numerous factors and the specific auto insurance company, a bad driving record can easily double or triple your auto insurance rates.

Auto insurance companies weigh factors differently and have different levels for risky drivers. In general, though, if you have more than two speeding tickets in the last three years, your rates will increase significantly. If one of those tickets is a reckless driving ticket, that one ticket is all you will need to see a big jump in rates. If your driving record is beyond bad, then you may not find an auto insurance company that will insure you. In this case, you may have to look for SR-22 auto insurance and this can really be expensive and may place restrictions on your driving.

Other Influences on Your Insurance Rates

In addition to your driving record, there are a few other important influences on your auto insurance rates.

• Your age and sex
• Type of vehicle
• Geographic location
• Credit score
• Miles driven per week

If these risk factors are low for you, they can contribute more to low auto insurance rates, or they can soften the blow a bit that a bad driving record can inflict.

Shopping Around for the Best Insurance Rates

Whether you have a good driving record, average driving record or bad driving record, you can benefit from shopping around. Auto insurance rates are not set by any state or federal government, so car insurance companies are free to charge what they wish. This leaves the possibility open for wide gaps from one company to another. To take advantage of these differences in rates, you can gather rate quotes to compare pricing. In just 15 minutes you can get multiple auto insurance quotes to find the best rates available to you, no matter your driving record.