What is the TRUE cost of a speeding ticket in Canada?
“Yeah, I’m a few kilometres per hour too fast, but that’s okay. Everyone does it.”
When you’ve been driving for a while, it’s pretty easy to tell yourself it’s okay to bend the rules every now and then. So many people do it, and so many people are fine. But speeding isn’t a joke. Even if there’s just a 1% chance that something will go wrong when you go over the speed limit, that’s still one chance you don’t want to take.
Speeding has consequences that go beyond just getting a ticket. Depending on the circumstances it can seriously affect your financial life. This is the REAL cost of a speeding ticket in Canada.
The ticket
First things first: you’ve received a speeding ticket. Depending on the circumstances, this situation could branch out a few different ways, but let’s assume that you were sober and that you weren’t going an extreme amount (like more than 40km/h) over the limit.
Speeding tickets themselves don’t typically cost a large amount in the grand scheme of things. Much of the time they cost you about one hundred bucks. If you were going 10km/h or more over the limit, you might face two hundred dollars or more in fines.
At this point, if you just want to pay the fine and get it over with, by all means do so. However, many traffic violations can be fought. If you have a good case and you win, it can save you money.
Fighting the ticket
If you’d like to fight the ticket, seek out legal help. Lawyers aren’t exactly cheap, so if you don’t have a particularly bad ticket, this option doesn’t seem to make financial sense at first. But it may let you save in the long run by avoiding having the ticket on your driving record. That means that, in an insurance company’s eyes, it basically didn’t happen.
Fighting the ticket with legal help will increase the cost of a speeding ticket in Canada up front, but it might save you in the long run because it can prevent the insurance company from raising your rates due to your speeding violation.
Higher insurance premium
Insurance companies view drivers with multiple traffic violations as more likely to be involved in a collision in the future. If you apply for a policy and conveniently forget about your tickets, that can be even worse when the truth comes out. Your rate will skyrocket. That could cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars before your rate goes back to its former level.
Speeding presents a risk, and insurers charge you more for that risk, boosting the real cost of a speeding ticket. Over time, this higher premium adds up.
So, what is the true cost of a speeding ticket in Canada?
Using a car insurance quoter, it’s possible to get a general idea of what a speeding ticket will cost you.
In this case, we will look at a quote for basic auto coverage as a 35-year-old experienced male driver with a clean record in Toronto. Using these stats, we got a yearly premium of $1,039. After giving him one speeding ticket within the last year, his rate went up to $1,380 per year. Consider that it will be at least a year or two before his rate starts to inch lower, and even longer before it goes back to the level it was at before.
It’s easy to see how a $100 speeding ticket can really cost you more than $500.