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One of the little white lies most parents try to feed their teen drivers as soon as they get their license is that a single speeding ticket is going to spell death to their car insurance rates. It's a good way to make sure that money conscious teens don't drive carelessly on the roads! Once they actually have that speeding ticket in hand, however, the consequences of a speeding ticket become a lot more real.
Getting a speeding tickets out on the highways is easy, especially if you live in an area with numerous speed limit changes or spend a lot of time on the interstate (where if the speed of traffic is moving below 90 you're doing good). All it takes is a second of inattention on your part and you can be holding a ticket worth hundreds of dollars in court costs.
The good news is, the court system knows how easy getting a speeding ticket can be. Especially for a teenager with a new license. That's why they came up with a few creative solutions to slapping that ticket on your record and calling it a day.
Most drivers with their first speeding ticket will be given the option to attend a driver improvement course (driving school) and may, if they're a young driver, be sentenced to community service. If they successfully complete the course and their service the speeding ticket will be dropped from their record. Why would the ordinarily more than a little money hungry justice system willingly give their drivers this kind of an "out"? Because they know it's easy for drivers to drive a little too fast and they believe the lesson learned is more important than paying the ticket.
And by the time you've done 40 hours of unpaid community service in the hospital emergency room cleaning up after the victims of car accidents like the one you could have had you'll lose the desire to find out how fast your wheels can go!
The good news is, if you successfully complete driving school and avoid a conviction your car insurance company is never going to find out about it. You see, your car insurance provider gets your personal information from the DMV. The DMV only has traffic violations on record that you've been convicted of, since you could be accused of everything and in America you get to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt by the court system.
A speeding ticket you're never convicted of is going to have no impact on your car insurance rates, so that first ticket they bring home probably isn't going to spell death to their chances of finding cheap insurance. Sorry moms and dads.
Of course, it's important to make sure that your first speeding ticket is your last. It is possible for a judge to see if you've been assigned driving school before, especially if you get pulled over in the same county, and you're probably not going to get so lucky the next time. So the next time you're out on the highway take a second to think of your car insurance rates and let up on the gas pedal.
Your checking account will thank you.