Do Speeding Tickets Affect Your Insurance in Ontario?

One of the most common concerns we hear at OTD Legal is about the impact of speeding tickets on insurance rates. Given the high cost of insurance in Ontario, it’s understandable why so many drivers worry about how a ticket could affect their premiums. Here, we break down the reality of speeding tickets and their influence on your insurance costs.

 

The Direct Impact of Speeding Tickets

Yes, speeding tickets can indeed affect your insurance rates, but the extent of the impact varies greatly. Several factors determine how much a ticket will increase your premiums, including the severity of the offence, your driving history, and the type of license you hold.

Graduated Licensing and Insurance Rates

For novice drivers, particularly those with a G2 license, even a minor speeding ticket can lead to significant insurance rate increases. These drivers are in a fragile position, as their licenses come with limited privileges and heightened scrutiny. A speeding ticket on a G2 license almost guarantees a spike in insurance costs.

Drivers with a full G license might not see a substantial impact from a single minor speeding ticket, assuming they have an otherwise clean driving record. However, this doesn’t mean they are immune to consequences, especially if tickets accumulate.

The Problem of Accumulation

The real issue arises with the accumulation of speeding tickets. Even if individual offences are minor, the total number can categorize a driver as high-risk, leading to dramatic increases in insurance premiums. 

Demographics

Young drivers, particularly those under 25, face the steepest challenges. Regardless of the offence’s nature, any ticket on a record can affect young drivers’ insurance rates. This is compounded for those holding G1 or G2 licenses, making any traffic violation a significant concern.

 

Get Help With OTD Legal

If you find yourself facing a ticket, it’s essential to consider the long-term financial impact before deciding how to proceed.

OTD Legal specializes in traffic ticket defence and can provide guidance on the best course of action for your specific situation. Whether you’re a new driver with a G2 license or an experienced motorist with a full G license, our team can help you understand the potential impacts on your insurance rates and offer strategies to mitigate these effects.

 

Contact OTD Legal for a free consultation. Our experienced team is ready to help you navigate the complexities of traffic violations and insurance implications, ensuring you make informed decisions about your driving future.

 

Video Transcription:

 Do speeding tickets affect insurance? This is arguably the most common question that myself or any of my staff address on a almost daily basis. And I think, when I hear that, I can’t help but think most of my clients or our clients that, that approach us are very worried about their insurance rates.

And for good reasons, they’re quite high, very expensive. It’s a big part of the. Of getting through your day, you know, these are expensive rates. You don’t want them to get worse and if you do get a ticket, you know that that may be in jeopardy. So the answer to that question before they call is they know it’s a yes and I can confirm that speeding tickets can affect your insurance rate to varying degrees.

There are a number of factors that change how much that may hurt your insurance rate. In some cases, there’s an element of subjectivity to this, meaning that you could have a a G2 driver, which means you’re on a graduated license. You’re new, limited privileges. And And in that sort of a situation, you could have a 17 year old on a G2 license.

And if they had a minor speeding ticket and they’ve said, well, I’ve got a 15 over or a 20 over, which is either a zero point offense or a three point offense, am I going to be okay? And the answer truly is when you’re under a G2 license and you receive a speeding ticket, you’re not going to be okay.

The answer is going to be, well, how much will my insurance rate go up? So for most people that have the standard license, which is a G class license in Ontario, which simply means general license, a minor speeding ticket, one, is not going to have much of an impact on that type of a license. We’re assuming things.

That particular client is, you know, driving the standard 20 to 24, 000 kilometers in a year, and there’s nothing else on their record. And one minor ticket like that, they’re going to be fine and they probably will not need our help. However, you could, using this as an example that I’ve had at one point in time, we had a G driver and this driver accumulated tickets.

And they were all, arguably, each of them very minor, so many of them were zero point offenses and the other ones were quite low. There were three point offenses, which we consider to be minor. The sheer volume or quantum of those tickets put that particular driver into a high risk category, which effectively tripled their insurance rate.

So the amount of speeding tickets was the problem, not the quantum. Okay. So when it, the answer is when you, when you have a speeding ticket is certainly something you want to investigate. I would recommend calling OTD legal and, and getting that free consultation and make sure that you’re going to be okay, or at least know exactly what the impact may be on your insurance record.

I talked earlier about G2 drivers. We refer to them as novice drivers. So those are drivers that are just starting out and they’re going to have either a G1 or a G2, also commonly referred to as graduated licenses. Those particular licenses are particularly vulnerable to really any speeding ticket. That problem is compounded when they’re in a, what I call, a vulnerable demographic.

So drivers, male or female, under the age of 25, on a novice driver’s license, G1, G2, are particularly vulnerable to pretty much any offence on their record.