How Long Does a DUI Conviction Affect Car Insurance Rates?

DUI - It's Short Term and Long Term After Effects

DUI is a serious offense to most states. This is because the offense is one of the major causes of traffic related accidents in United States alone. In fact some statistics actually say that it can be blamed for roughly 12,000 traffic related deaths per year. And because of this, the state and several other private companies as well do not take DUI offenders very lightly.

For example, if you are an offender, the government may subject you to several punishments including:

1. Temporary suspension or permanent cancellation of your driver's license depending on the gravity of the offense you have committed.

2. Jail - time especially if you have caused serious damages to properties and physical injuries.

3. If your offense is not that "big" enough to have you be thrown in jail, the judge may require you to render additional community service.

Note that those punishments are not exactly easy. In fact, they are not only hard to do but they can be pretty humiliating and expensive as well. Why expensive you ask? Simply because not only are you slapped with fines to pay but you would also have to hire a professional attorney who will represent you during court hearings.

And while all those seem horrible enough, you have to know that your punishment per se does not really stop there. You will be bound to feel the effect of your offense longer than you expected because even if your case has been cleared it will still affect your car insurance a great deal.

See, once your insurance company finds out that you have a DUI offense under your name, they are more likely to do two things. The first one is, they would classify you as a high risk driver. And as a high risk driver, you will be subject to purchase a more expensive insurance because your insurance company will be issuing an SR-22 form to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) stating that they will responsible not only for your car and for you as well.

The second and perhaps the worst thing that can happen after a DUI, is non-renewal of your auto insurance policy. Yes, there is still the option of finding another insurance company to cover you, but with a previous non - renewal record, you may have a hard time looking for another firm.

And as if that is not enough, here is another thing that you should also note. The two effects of a DUI conviction on auto insurance last for quite a while. In most cases, it lasts until your record has been cleared or erased by DMV. So this means that if your record remains there for 10 or 30 years, you have to deal with its after effects for the same amount of time.

Those are the things that will happen after you got involved with a DUI case. Hopefully after knowing those, you will find it in you to think twice before you even attempt on grabbing a bottle of alcohol and speeding away with your car after.