I would like to know when auto insurance companies in Washington check driving records?

Carol

Spokane, WA

An insurance carrier in Spokane, WA can check your driving record anytime. The most common times that they check your driving records are:

• when you apply initially for auto insurance coverage
• when you request a change to your car insurance policy such as adding or removing drivers, change auto insurance coverage, etc.
• when you add a car to your car insurance policy or change the covered car
• when your car insurance policy comes up for renewal
• every two renewal cycles

Some insurance providers use a random method for checking driving records. Other insurance providers randomly spot check some car insurance policy records at the above intervals. This isn’t common, however it may happen with some car insurance companies.

A: Your Seattle non owner SR22 policy is costing you because it’s missing a pretty big puzzle piece which car insurance companies require in order to put together the best picture of what your rates should be–a car. Even if you drive the same car all the time with your non owner policy, it can’t be factored into your insurance policy, so your company has to rate your policy as if you were driving a riskier car because they can’t know what car it is you’re using.

You can save money on your Seattle non owner SR22 premium by getting discounts. Many of the available discounts require cars, but there are those which don’t. You could try getting all of your insurance policies on a multi line with one company, for example, or you could take a few classes in defensive driving. You could take in your transcript if you’re a student, a degree if you’re in engineer, or you could join a car club or a teacher’s union in order to get a discount. Get a list of discounts from your car insurance company and circle the ones which would apply to you, and then ask the company to apply them.

A: As they say, when you do the crime, you got do the time. SR22 rates are punitive, and while it may be extremely unpleasant having to pay such high rates during the time you have to file SR22, it is a successful deterrent. However, that’s no why your rates are so high.

As a matter of fact, SR22 rates are high because policy holders who must have an SR22 filed on their behalf are considered to be very risky to insure. An attitude like that stems from the fact that most people who have a SR22 insurance policy have one because they were convicted of drunk driving–obviously prey easy to cause an accident that way.

Since car insurance companies measure what they charge you according to the risk you pose to them, such factors play a big part. If you have to have, then you will pay more into the insurance pool than will people who have never made a driving mistake in their lives, have mid sized economic hybrid cars, are middle aged, and so on.