Motorcycle Insurance Articles
How A Traffic Citation Can Affect Your Motorcycle Insurance Quotes
2010-03-29
Owning a motorcycle can save you a lot of money. They are generally less expensive than cars, they consume less gas, and can park in tighter, often less-expensive spots. However, there are some variables that can raise the cost of motorcycle ownership, including motorcycle insurance rates. One way to avoid unnecessary hikes in your insurance rate is to keep moving violations off of your driving record.
Although every motorcycle insurance policy is different, you can almost guarantee that insurance prices will increase with each moving violation that you receive. As an example, if you are insuring a standard motorcycle for a 25-year old male, you can expect to pay around $10 more per month for a driver who has a ticket on his record in the last six months compared to one who has a clean driving record. And on top of that, the same driver would have to pay at least $20 more than that if he has two tickets in the past 6 months - a total of at least $30 greater than a driver with a clean record. That can be an increase of almost 50% for an average driver.
Although it may not seem fair that a motorcycle insurance quote would increase when no real damage has been done, all that insurance companies care about is the mere likelihood that damage will be done. Insurance companies spend millions of dollars a year working with actuaries and statisticians to understand the profiles of automobile and motorcycle drivers to determine who is at the greatest risk to cause damage to their own property or to the properties of others. As they look at motorists with a greater number of tickets, they see a direct correlation to the number of accidents they are involved in. So as you receive more tickets, you are profiled by insurance companies in a group of drivers that accompanies more money due to repairs they have to pay for. This means that they charge more to cover these anticipated costs.
If you have several moving violations on your record recently, you should shop around for motorcycle insurance quotes. Some insurance companies will offer lower rates for drivers with no moving violations on their record, but have extremely steep motorcycle insurance premiums to drivers once they receive a moving violation. However, there are other companies that provide relatively high motorcycle insurance quotes to drivers with clean records, but have less steep premiums when a driver receives moving violations. Although the safest - and cheapest - route to take is to ride responsibly and never get any tickets. You can also shop around to find the insurance rates that are most cost-effective for your driving record.