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Did you know that there are over 41,000,000 speeding tickets issued annually in the United States? Do you ever get that feeling like Big Brother’s just standing there, staring over your shoulder, waiting for the day when you wake up so late that you could be Superman and still not make it to work on time so they can slap you with a speeding ticket and boost their state revenues? Okay, so it’s probably not quite that bad, but the bottom line is that speeding tickets are frighteningly easy to come by and can leave a long lasting impression on your auto insurance premiums.

See, your auto insurance company is going to hit you with a pretty crossover after you’ve been convicted (note: not given a ticket, convicted-as in, a judge said there’s absolutely, positively no way that you could possibly have been doing the speed limit that day). The first thing they’re going to do is yank away your Good Driver discount, the five to fifteen percent (or higher) they shaved off your insurance policy because you didn’t have any visible blemishes on your driving record.

Let’s do the math. Say you’re currently paying $300 a month for the auto insurance on your jazzy Corvette. (Please note, this is just an example-actual insurance rates will vary.) Because you’re a long time customer with a clean driving record who was already going to be paying an arm and a leg to insure your snappy new sports car your insurance provider cut you a 25% discount on your insurance. Now that you’ve been slapped with a speeding ticket, they’re tacking that 25% back on. That raises your premium payments a full $100 a month. That’s $1,200 a year!

To add insult to injury, your auto insurance provider is also going to raise the rates on your insurance premiums to compensate for the fact that you are now considered to be a much higher insurance risk than you were previously. The average speeding ticket raises the rates of your auto insurance premiums by $900 over the course of a three year period. That’s an extra $300 a year (minimum) that you are likely to be paying for your insurance. (Again, actual rates may vary.)

Your annual auto insurance premium just jumped from $3,600 a year to $5,100 a year, all because of a speeding ticket.

It puts a little bit of perspective back into that morning rush for work, doesn’t it? The bottom line is that nine times out of ten, stopping to smell the roses in the morning (and observe things like red lights and posted speed limits) will pay off in the long run in the amount of money you’re going to save on your auto insurance, and really, don’t you have something better to do with $1,500 a year? Saving hundreds of dollars on your auto insurance can go a long way toward paving the road to wealth, financial freedom and a week spent sipping Mai Tais under a Caribbean sun.Anthony M. Peck is the Senior Developer, Software Project Manager, and Director of Business Development for QuoteScout.com. For more information, please visit them on the web at QuoteScout.com.

If you’re like most drivers you spent most of your teen years listening to your parents exhort the evils of getting a speeding ticket. It’s going to kill your car insurance rates, you’re going to have to pay a ton of money, etc, etc. And that court appearance is nothing to look forward to either! The good news is, your first speeding ticket isn’t going to be as bad as all that. Here’s what you need to know about your first ticket and what it’s really going to do to your car insurance.

It doesn’t take much to get a speeding ticket out on the road these days. When the speed of traffic’s moving at ten to fifteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit it’s easy to get into the habit of driving with a lead foot. The problem is, that lead foot’s going to attract the attention of some local law enforcement officers you’d rather not have looking your way! A moment of inattention and they’ve got you in their sights.

The good thing is, the judge knows that it’s all too easy to pick up a speeding ticket, especially the first time when you’re really not paying attention and you don’t understand all the nuances of speed and the highway. Since the legal system would rather have a highway full of safe drivers rather than hundreds of people paying speeding tickets over and over again. So they have their own way of dealing with first offenders that’s going to spell good news for your car insurance.

Depending on what county in what state you happen to be living in you’re probably going to have the option of either paying off your speeding ticket or appearing before the judge and petitioning to be allowed to complete a driver’s improvement course and/or community service and having the offense sponged off your record. For those of you who are flinching at the thought of having to take another driver’s education course, relax. You’re not in high school anymore, and while these classes aren’t usually scintillating they aren’t as bad as you think they’re going to be.

And after spending forty hours of unpaid slave time in the hospital emergency room cleaning up after car accident victims and the other patients that come your way, as one county in Virginia requires you to do, you’re going to be much more conscientious about the consequences of driving too fast out on the road.

Since car insurance companies get their information about your driving record directly from the DMV, which only bothers recording driving offenses you’ve actually been convicted of and could care less about the ones you haven’t, it will be like that speeding ticket never happened. It’s not going to impact your car insurance rates at all. However, if for some reason you aren’t lucky enough to be assigned to driving school (or if this isn’t your first offense) the first speeding ticket on your record doesn’t usually send your insurance rates soaring.

The trick is to make sure you don’t pick up enough speeding that you make the list of car insurance’s most wanted. Then, and only then, can you really say goodbye to your chances of cheap car insurance.Anthony M. Peck is the Senior Developer, Software Project Manager and Director of Business Development for QuoteScout.com. For more information on speeding tickets and your auto insurance rates visit them on the web at http://www.QuoteScout.com.

Do you have a sixteen year old anxiously waiting to get their driver’s license? More importantly, are you dreading the damage they’re going to do to your car insurance rates? Relax. You’re always going to have to pay to insure your teen, but with a little research (and a fair amount of encouragement) you can keep your teen driver car insurance from killing your bank account.

1) The single best way to keep your teen’s car insurance rates low (or at least something resembling reasonable) is to keep their driving record clean. The reason it costs so much more to insure teens is that they’re 60% more likely to have an accident than adults, and there’s a very good chance they’ll get at least one speeding ticket before they’re 18. Teaching them to be safe, defensive drivers and setting a good example when it comes to following the rules of the road will do more to help you save money on your teen driver car insurance than anything else you could do.

2) Has your teen taken a Driver’s Ed/Driver’s Improvement course yet? Most schools offer them, but if your child has completed their GED or taken an alternative route to getting their driver’s license it would be an excellent idea to encourage them to take a driver’s improvement class. These classes usually last all day for two to three days, at the end of which your teen will receive positive points on their driver’s license that will go a long way toward helping save both of you money on car insurance.

3) Restrict the amount of time they spend on the road. Seriously. You’re more likely to be involved in an accident if you’re out on the road more often. The same rule applies to your teen. Young drivers who drive to and from work and school regularly rather than using the bus or public transportation are statistically more likely to file car insurance claims, so restricting the number of hours/miles they drive will go a long way toward dropping their car insurance rates.

4) What kind of grades are they getting? As an adult your responsibility and reliability are determined by checking up on your credit score. Since your teen doesn’t have credit score yet your insurance company is going to get a quick view of their reliability by checking up on their GPA. Honor roll students qualify for great car insurance discounts with most insurance companies, so don’t be afraid to give them a push every now and then to pull their grades up.

5) What’s your teen tooling around town in? You’re probably already painfully aware of the fact that not all cars are created equal when it comes to your car insurance rates. Expensive cars=expensive insurance premiums, and vice versa. Making your teen a driver on your old clunker and not letting them within 100 miles of the jag will do a lot to pull down your car insurance rates and keep your teen driver from breaking your monthly budget.Anthony M. Peck is the Senior Developer, Software Project Manager, and Director of Business Development for QuoteScout.com. For more information on how to find cheap car insurance for your teen driver, visit them on the web at http://www.QuoteScout.com.