The Driver Risk Premium is a premium that you get invoiced once a year based on the number of convictions that you have on your driving record, depending on what those convictions are.
Not every ticket you get will trigger a Driver Risk Premium invoice, but the tickets that do trigger it are the ones considered to be high-risk offences.
If you have a Criminal Code driving-related conviction or a conviction for any 10-point Motor Vehicle Act infraction, which could include driving while prohibited, you are required to pay the Driver Risk Premium.
You will also have to pay the premium if you have one or more excessive speeding tickets; two or more roadside suspensions, including 24-hour prohibitions, IRPs or ADPs; and two or more convictions for using an electronic device while driving.
The premium is calculated based on a three-year period. Every year on your birthday, ICBC looks back at the last three years of convictions on your driving record and then calculates how much money you owe.
You get invoiced once a year. The invoice lasts for three years, and the invoice may be different if you get more tickets or if time passes between the last tickets you had.
The Driver Risk Premium is separate from your insurance, which means that your insurance rates can still go up if you get any of these tickets, and you will also have to pay the premium.
The amount you pay depends on the type of offence you get, and here is the official list of ticket costs from the ICBC website.
For a Criminal Code conviction, it’s a little over $1100 for one offence. For one excessive speeding ticket, the premium is $392 a year for three years.
Can you reduce the Driver Risk Premium?
There are two ways to get rid of the premium invoice.
The first way is to give up your driver’s license for three years. This can cause your Driver Risk Premium to go away.
The other thing you can do is give up your license for at least 30 days during the billing period and the premium will be reduced.
But there are steps you have to follow in order for this to work. You cannot just on your own decisions that you won’t drive for the 30 days and that’s that. What you have to do is contact ICBC and arrange for a negotiated agreement of a reduced Driver Risk Premium if you agree not to drive.
This requires booking an appointment at a driver’s licensing office and explaining to them why you will be giving up your license, and then you’ll have to call ICBC to find out how much you owe.
Then, after the days are up, you’re going to have to reapply for your license, by booking another appointment at ICBC. You also have to pay the remaining balance to reinstate your license.
What a lot of people don’t realize while going through this process, is that it may not actually be worth your while to negotiate your reduction because it can actually cost you more money to suspend your license for 30 days.
Driver Penalty Point Premium
The Driver Penalty Point Premium may sound like it’s the same thing as the Driver Risk Premium, but it’s not.
What it is, is a bill you get from ICBC with driving offences or convictions that have been accumulated within a one-year period.
If you get points for traffic offences, then you have to pay this premium based on the number of points you get.
Anytime you get a ticket, the ticket has a certain number of points associated with it, and these points will vary depending on the type of ticket you get.
ICBC looks at the number of points you received during a 12-month period, and from this, they determine how many points were added to your driving record within that time.
There is a trick though because they don’t go by when the incident actually happened, they go by when the incident gets added to your driving record.
Basically, if you get three speeding tickets once a year for three years, but because of court delays they are all processed within a week of each other, your Driving Penalty Point Premium will be calculated for all three of those tickets even though they were each in separate years.
The premium is triggered when you get more than three points, so the magic number is four. If you get four or more points you have to pay the premium.
Just like the Driver Risk Premium, it is also separate from insurance, so there is a high likelihood you will probably have to pay both.
How much does it cost?
Here is a list of prices you will be required to pay depending on the number of points you have accumulated;
For 4 points you will have to pay $214
For 6 points you will have to pay $367
For 10 points you will have to pay $783-1108
You are required to pay these premiums, and if you don’t, you cannot reinstate your license or purchase insurance.
The only benefit is that you won’t have to pay both a Driver Risk Premium and a Driver Penalty Point Premium. You only have to pay the one that costs more money.
If you have a bad driving record, and your Driver Penalty Point Premium in a year is going to be $3000, but your Driver Risk Premium is only going to be $2800, that year you would be paying the Driver Penalty Point Premium.
The other thing that not everyone knows is that if you do not pay the premium, ICBC charges interest. And their interest rates are as predatory as credit card interest rates.
If you think it’s okay to leave it unpaid because maybe you don’t need your license for a little while, so you can sort it out later, that is the worst thing you can do. if you leave it, the premium will actually be way higher than what your original invoice was.
At the end of the day, try your very best not to get traffic tickets, because if you do you may end up paying hidden costs that you don’t know about, including Driver Risk and Driver Penalty Point Premiums.
