Tickets can have all sorts of consequences that are not printed on the face of the ticket. They can attract penalty points, and trigger driving prohibitions, and they can result in you having to pay Driver Risk Premiums or Penalty Point Premiums.
There are a number of reasons to be concerned that if you get a traffic ticket in BC, you may be at risk of a bigger financial loss than just paying the ticket itself.
On top of all the above consequences to consider, there is another hidden cost — one that is more hidden than most and that is the potential for the ticket to affect your insurance rates.
It used to be, in BC, that no matter how many traffic tickets you got, your insurance rates would stay the same.
Everybody would pay pretty much almost the same amount for their insurance, with some differences based on certain factors, such as the vehicle someone drove, or where they lived.
But recent changes to ICBC policies, as a result of the so-called ‘ICBC dumpster fire,’ mean that ICBC had to find more ways to make and keep more money.
To do this, they started a process of identifying who may constitute a high-risk driver.
The ICBC insurance underwriters weren’t just looking through the Driver Risk Premiums anymore, but also any evidence that would suggest someone be more likely to be involved in a collision.
In the past, the evidence that someone was likely to be involved in a collision would be based on the person’s history of at-fault collisions. If you were found to be 50% or more at fault, your insurance rates would go up as a result of your culpability.
However, this was not enough for ICBC. They have since determined that people’s risk of being in a collision is also associated with their risk factors as drivers.
In 2020, ICBC changed the rules to now take into account your driving record when it comes to determining your insurance rates.
There is no set formula, it seems, that ICBC has for how much a ticket will affect your insurance rates. They have never released to the public the formula that it uses to factor in the insurance rate increase associated with single or multiple entries in your driving record.
Despite the fact that this information is not public knowledge, we do have some idea about what they take into account. Certain offences, like speeding and distracted driving, are associated with higher crash risk, and therefore trigger insurance rate increases.
This means that receiving a single excessive speeding or distracted driving ticket will be enough to trigger an increase in your insurance rates.
Two regular speeding tickets will also trigger an increase in your insurance cost every year.
Finally, two or more tickets for what are considered to be “minor” moving violations, such as running a stop sign, making an unsafe turn, crossing a solid line, and so on can also trigger an increase in your insurance. While all these offences are seemingly minor violations, if they happen more than twice, it can result in an insurance increase.
Many people ask us how much their insurance will go up based on the ticket they got, but that is an impossible question to answer.
There is a base rate for insurance that is then altered by someone’s personal driving record and other information ICBC knows about you, including where you live and where you drive to, the reason you drive, how much you drive in a year, and the type of vehicle you drive.
This is why you and your neighbour may pay completely different rates, even though you have relatively similar vehicles. Everyone’s risk level is different.
The best that we can tell you is that traffic tickets do have an impact on your insurance rates, and the impact can be anywhere between a few dollars to a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars.
That is why it is important to dispute any and all traffic tickets you receive. Even though the face of the ticket should tell you the penalties that you’re going to face, the hidden costs are unknown.
