Paying your car insurance premium month after month causes most people to think about various ways to lower their auto insurance rates. Year after year your rates continue to increase even though you had a clean driving record during that period. Many auto insurance companies will increase your online car insurance rates just to make more profits.

However, various aspects regarding your own driving record will be used to calculate your car insurance rates. While you may be familiar with what these aspects are and how they are used to determine your online car insurance rates, it is important to investigate this information in order to access your situation.

Moving Violations and Auto Insurance Rates

In general, having just one minor ticket on your record is not going to affect your auto insurance rates quite that much. If you were speeding only a few miles over the limit or missed a stop sign, you may have a small increase in your rates by only a few percentage points. It's when you have more than one ticket and they are considered major that you'll really feel the pinch.

As an example, if you receive a moving violation for speeding, normally the insurance company will find out how fast over the limit you were going; less than 10 miles, 11 to 15 miles, or 16 and over. Generally, if you are speeding at more than 16 miles per hour over the limit your car insurance rates will be higher than someone who was caught speeding at only 5 miles per hour over the limit. Also, if over a three year timeframe you only get cited for one such violation it will have less impact on your rates than if you received multiple violations.

Major traffic tickets will negatively impact your car insurance rates across the board. Usually rate increases between 10% and 25% are common for DWI or DUI offenses. Consider the increase in your auto insurance rates for being cited not only for a couple of major moving violations but having a DUI in addition.

How Much You Drive

Additional factors that affect your car insurance rates are the amount of time you spend behind the wheel as well as the reasons for driving. The amount of time behind the wheel increases the likelihood that you will be in an accident. Traveling a long distance to get to and from work will cause you to pay a higher premium than the person who works from home or drives a short distance to work. You may not be able to change the location of your job, but you can consider using your car less by carpooling or even choosing an alternate form of transportation to get to work.

Also consider that the business use of your automobile will impact your auto insurance rates. This will increase the insurance companies risk to insure you thus increasing the risk of them paying a claim at some point in time. Every indication is that auto insurance rates will continue to climb into the future, it is important to consider all options available that will assist you in reducing your online car insurance rates as much as possible.