DUI Conviction and Insurance Rates

Answer 1

A drunken driving conviction will cause your insurance rates to jump sky high whether or not the accident resulted in injury or death. Insurance companies will raise your rates when you are convicted with a DUI because you become a liability to insure when on the roadways. Dangerous drivers or repeat offenders are riskier to insure, which causes insurance companies to raise rates.

The Insurance Information Institute estimates that one person dies every 29 minutes as a result of a drunken driving accident. Driving under the influence can cause serious bodily harm to yourself, passengers in your car, people in other cars and can even result in death. As you begin to shop around for a new policy you now have two asterisks on your record; a DUI conviction and a cancelled policy. Both of these asterisks will stick out like a sore thumb. If your insurance rates have been raised because of a DUI conviction your rates will not go down for a period of years. Sometimes the high rates last anywhere from three to five years after the conviction. The length of the high rates depends on your personal insurance company and your state’s regulations for insurance.

Being convicted of a DUI does not just raise the price of your auto insurance policy, which you may have to cancel because you lost your license anyway, but it also affects your wallet in other ways. Some of the other ways a DUI conviction will cost you money are:

• Towing: $300 - $1,200

• Bail: $250 - $2,500

• Fines and Court Fees : $500 - $2,500

• Attorney Fees (average): $2,500

• Mandatory Education and Treatment: $350 - $2,000

• Electronic Home Monitoring: $150 - $2,250

• Ignition Lock: $730 - $2,800

If you take note, a lawsuit is not mentioned in the above list. Driving under the influence usually also brings about a lawsuit depending on any damage you caused to public or private property, if you injured other people, or if you caused other drivers or pedestrians to lose their lives as a result of your negligence. Lawsuits resulting from driving under the influence can cost the defendant thousands of dollars in pain and suffering, emotional distress, medical bills, loss of consortium, loss of limb, negligence and much more. A trial involving driving under the influence can last anywhere from three months to over a year depending on the health of the parties involved.