Punishment for Teen's Speeding Tickets?

[DrReplyInRhymes]

Thanks for all of this!! I know it must have taken a while to type up. I appreciate it!

 

The car title is actually in my name and I paid $8000 for it up front. No financing was involved. Right now, both of our names and both of our vehicles are on one policy. This policy comes out to $262/month (statefarm and we live in TX). Before I added him and the extra vehicle, I was paying $102/month for my car only. So basically I am paying $160 more now for his. Would you suggest keeping him on mine, but having him pay me the $161/month? Our rate is actually going to go down at the start of our renewal in December for 3 reasons: 1)renewal discount, 2)I am taking a DD course online to get a discount, and 3)he is almost done with the teen steer clear program. (We will continue to get multiple driver discounts and his drivers Ed discount).

 

As for the traffic tickets, I don't think they will affect us at all, as I have a new update to my last one! I went to an attorney's office today and used $100 of his savings to hire the attorney to have the tickets dismissed.

 

Also another update...Job hunting went well this weekend and he has a good chance of being hired at a very big retail chain!

 

Once again, I can't in good taste answer this with a rhyme. Therefore, I will answer once again with no rhyme!

 

My best suggestion would be to do as you are doing. Since you are the registered owner of the vehicle, the way your policy is currently set up is perfectly fine from an insurance standpoint. (You are owner of the vehicle / policy, and he is listed as an operator of your vehicles.)

 

State Farm is a preferred provider, which means that in all likelihood, they will not re-order your MVR until a claim is made. This means that if you make 0 claims on this policy in the next 3 years, chances are you will never pay an increased rate due to the tickets he recently received.

 

Keep in mind, I do not work for State Farm and all companies have different rules to abide by.

 

As far as your insurance cost doubling by adding a sub-21 driver to the policy, that sounds about right. Young drivers are an extremely high risk and insurance companies will charge according to that risk.

 

My only other suggestion would be to look for some kind of good student discount, or a replacement for a good student discount that can be had with taking specific classes usually offered by the company (In this case, it sounds like he's enrolled in a teen-steer-clear program which will help!).

 

Having an attorney remove those tickets off his record is also a wise way to approach this, and I commend you for doing as such. Keep in mind to check with the DMV for his updated MVR after the attorney is finished to double check and make sure his driving abstract is indeed free and clear of those tickets, otherwise you may have to "prove" the removal of those tickets to the insurance company...and that may require you to provide documentation (including court documents showing the final decision along with a re-ordered MVR) to the insurance company to have any surcharges removed, and good driving discounts reinstated.

 

Also, I wanted to explain my rude reasoning for financing an older vehicle, especially as a young driver:

 

We all know what it was like to be young and have our sights set on a car. However, financing an older vehicle, in terms of insurance, is not logical sometimes.

 

For example, and I'm going to use example-friendly numbers, let's declare the constants currently: (please keep in mind, I do not know your specifics so this is strictly theory and using percentages to illustrate an idea!)

 

Let's say a 20 year old finances a vehicle for $4,000.

 

Car in question: 2001 Honda Civic (financed for 5 years for lowest payment plan)

Cost of full coverage:Using your numbers, approximately $160/mo (or $960/6months... Let's also assume you have a $500 deductibles.) The cost of collision and comprehensive, the 2 coverages that will cover your vehicle, is roughly 50% of your 6 month premium, or in this case, just under $500, for arbitrary numbers...

 

Objectively speaking, for a vehicle that is 13 years old, insurance companies may pay out around $3,000-$4,000 on a good day! Obviously the state of the vehicle will dictate further how much they will value the car.

 

After the first year of insurance, if you had a claim that needed to be paid, you will have effectively paid into insurance approximately $1,000 ($500 for coll/comp coverages for 6 months...) PLUS the deductible that would need to be paid in order to utilize the coverage. (In our example, this would be another $500.) This means that after the first year of paying for insurance, you would have effectively paid into insurance approximately $1500 already in order to utilize one of those coverages.

 

Another year passes, and now you have paid $2500.

Another year passes, and now you have paid $3500.

 

As you can see, in only 3 years time, you will have effectively paid into an insurance company what you would receive back for a total-loss of an older vehicle. This means that after that 3 year mark, you are paying MORE MONEY to receive A LESS AMOUNT BACK. I.e. After the 4th year, you would have paid $4500 to receive $4000 back from the insurance company, and that's not even including the extra money you would need to pay for the loss of good driving discounts / accident surcharges / etc if a claim is made due to an at-fault accident!!!

 

So...to anyone who has a young child looking to finance a vehicle that is older, it's simply....not worth it! This happens more often than I'd like to admit. And financing a vehicle REQUIRES you to carry collision and comprehensive, or they will purchase lender-placed insurance FOR YOU, at a premium exponentially higher than what most 3rd party providers would be able to do.

 

All in all, don't finance an old car, especially if you are a young driver!! This is also why it is very neat to have the option to speak with your agent before you purchase a car so you can see if it's ....worth it, for lack of better words!

 

No need to thank me for this information, I am happy you are able to do what you will with this information. Plus I'm known to talk incessantly in my life, and this helps in curbing it to text at least.

 

Back to my elementary rhymes!

Edited November 18, 2014 by DrReplyInRhymes

[whichwayisup]

I am so furious right now! I was just doing an online city traffic citation search and discovered my 17 year old son already has two speeding tickets (44 in a 30 and 51 in a 40)! He has only had his vehicle for 3 months. Is this normal for a teenage male???

 

Normal or not, there will be consequences! I'm thinking no vehicle for 2 weeks. Or is one month better? He doesn't know it yet, but he will also be job hunting this weekend to pay for these tickets and the hike in insurance I'm about to receive.

 

Grrr...I'm so mad!!! What upsets me even more is that he hasn't even shown me or told me about the tickets. Was he just going to ignore them, miss his court dates, and have a warrant put out?? It's a good thing I caught them in time. He has a lot of explaining to do when he gets home.

 

1 month is fair. Depending on his reaction and how remorseful he is! If he cops an attitude with you and is sassy, add another month to his not driving.

 

He has to learn the responsibility of having a car and that means paying attention to tickets that need to be paid. Understanding the rules of the road and MOST of all, NO drinking and driving, NO texting. In fact, he should keep his phone off or kept on silent mode while in the car.

 

Was he scared to tell you about the speeding tickets or did he just forget?

[UpwardForward]

My father said he was going to put a bucket of bolts under my hood, so I would hear the racket and slow down.

 

I kind of thought his father had told him the same thing.

[Buzzle]

I agree with this. He really doesn't seem responsible enough.

 

Two speeding tickets in his first three months of driving? And he was going at least ten miles over the limit both times? And he never told you? He is not responsible enough to have a car.

 

Please take him off the road so that he doesn't hurt anyone. I'm serious.

 

He's a bad driver.

 

Take the car. My eldest son did this same thing and we SHOULD have taken the car from him. He got several speeding tickets for going extremely fast on the freeway and didn't tell us - I think we probably grounded him for a short period of time but in hind-site we should have taken the damn car. He ended up wrecking it some months later and he's lucky he didn't kill himself. Had he hit on any other panel than the rear he probably would have. The one blessing out of it all is that the DMV took away his driving privilege (like WE should have) and then I no longer had to worry about him behind the wheel.

 

Teenagers think they are better drivers than they really are and they think they are invincible. When you have a proven irresponsible driver on your hands, take the car. Driving is a privilege and NOT a right.