What Tickets Affect Insurance In Ontario?

Understanding which tickets affect your insurance in Ontario is essential for managing your driving record and avoiding increased premiums. Not all tickets have a direct impact on your insurance, but some can significantly affect your rates. Let’s explore the types of tickets that can affect your insurance in Ontario:

Types of Tickets That Do Not Affect Insurance

• Parking Tickets: Parking violations typically do not affect your insurance. They are financial penalties for parking infractions.
• Red Light Camera and Photo Radar Tickets: While these tickets may come with substantial fines, they usually do not appear on your driving record or affect your insurance rates.

Tickets That Can Affect Insurance

• Moving Violations: Moving violations like careless driving and speeding are more likely to affect your insurance. These infractions can add demerit points to your driving record.
• Speeding Tickets: Depending on the severity of the speeding offense, you may accumulate demerit points. Insurance companies may view excessive speeding as a risk factor.
• Demerit Points: Accumulating demerit points through various traffic violations can result in increased insurance rates.
• License Suspensions: If you receive a license suspension due to repeated traffic violations, insurance companies may consider you a higher risk, leading to increased premiums.

 

To understand how different traffic tickets can affect your insurance, consider reviewing this informative resource provided by OTD Legal. It provides valuable insights into the relationship between traffic tickets and insurance rates in Ontario.

Insurance companies primarily assess your driving record, which includes the type and severity of offenses on your abstract. They do not take into account the circumstances leading to the charges but focus on the presence of convictions, suspensions, and demerit points.

To avoid detrimental effects on your insurance, it’s crucial to address moving violations and minimize demerit points. Seeking legal assistance from experts like OTD Legal can help you develop effective defense strategies and potentially reduce or eliminate the impact of these tickets on your insurance. Being proactive in dealing with traffic violations can help you maintain lower insurance rates.

By understanding how different tickets affect your insurance and taking appropriate measures, you can make informed decisions to safeguard your driving record and financial well-being.

 

Video Transcription:

I want to talk today about a question that’s come up in the practice. What tickets affect insurance in Ontario? It’s an important thing to be thinking about. It’s an important thing to have a good understanding of what those things are. In order to answer that question, we have to understand that there are multiple types of questions and charges in Ontario, because you could have something like a parking ticket which if you don’t know, it’s not something you have to worry about with your insurance, It’s simply a fine.

There are other tickets that mimic something serious that are simply not. Oftentimes we are contacted for things like a red light camera ticket or a photo radar ticket. Now they scare people because there’s usually a large fine with those tickets. But it’s important to note that that does not show up on your driving abstract.

Driving abstract is your driving record, so if you’re buying insurance or you’re worried about your insurance, you need to worry about what your insurance company is aware of and what they will see on your driving abstract. So we don’t have to worry about parking tickets and we don’t have to worry about red light camera tickets or photo radar tickets.

I understand why people are concerned and certainly they’re annoyed when they see a significant fine on there, but it’s generally speaking, in most cases, not something that I need to help you with because it’s going to have no further effect than that fine. The tickets that we need to worry about that will affect your insurance in Ontario are ones that actually follow onto your driving abstract or record.

The type of offense, so you can get something as minor as an improper license plate sticker that’s considered minor would show up on your driving abstract, is not going to do you any favors, but in most cases it’s not going to affect your insurance to the degree that we need to be worried. The types of tickets that would hurt your insurance are moving violations such as; careless driving, speeding at a rate of speed, you know, three and four points. Those are the ones we need to consider doing something about. Those are the ones that we need to focus on. Well, what are we gonna do about this?

Now, one of the things that happens in these charges, when it arrives on your abstract, for example, if you get a speeding ticket and that speeding ticket was enough on a graduated license where it triggered a license suspension of some sort. Well, what would happen on that abstract? Okay. And remember, this is what the insurance companies are looking at. So now you’ve got a speeding ticket with some points, you’ve got another one with more points. Now there’s enough of an accumulation that it triggers a suspension.

When that all shows up, what the insurance company will see on your abstract or record is speeding ticket, speeding ticket and suspension. Now we all know that the suspension was a direct result of this speeding ticket here. I know that and you know that, but that’s not how an insurance company looks at that, and that’s important to note.

So when we know that this is going to happen and it may trigger a suspension, that’s indeed where we need to be involved. Or more importantly, when you need to take action, where you need to do something to prevent that from happening.