New 2012 Driving Laws that Can Affect Your Insurance Rates

Even the states get into the New Year’s resolution mood with new 2012 driving laws for you to obey.

Keep on top of your state's new 2012 driving laws.

Across the nation new driving laws are put into place every New Year’s Day that can end up affecting your insurance if you don’t abide by them. Just like insurance though, driving laws vary from one state to another. To find out what new 2012 driving laws you may have in your state, contact your local Department of Motor Vehicles.

Here is just a very small sample of some of the laws put in place on January 1st of this year. You may have similar laws already in your state or you may be seeing them soon; depending on how well they work in the states that are putting them into place this year.

New 2012 Laws for Seat Belts

Seatbelts save lives. I know that there are many out there that would strongly disagree with this statement, but the facts and the personal experiences speak for themselves. The state of California, however, took it one step further this New Year. They enacted a law that not only requires seatbelts, but also that children age 6-8 must still use a booster seat. The child must continue to us their booster seat until they reach age 8 or the height of 4’9” tall (whichever is first).

New 2012 Laws for Drunk Driving

A number of states put stricter drunk driving laws into place on January 1st, including California, Nebraska, Arizona and New Mexico. In Nebraska, violators now have the option of either just having their driver’s license taken away or agreeing to have an ignition interlock device installed on their vehicle. Offenders will still be able to drive to work and school with the lock, as long as they are doing so sober.

New 2012 Laws for Electronic Distractions

Many states already have cell phone laws in place that make it illegal to talk or text on your phone while driving. There are some holdouts, like Idaho, that still refuse to make a decision one way or another on the topic. Still more and more states are following the ones that have put laws like this in place and for 2012 Oregon is following suit.

Yes, Oregon has a law that already bans cell phone use in the car. The new law this year adds to it, and also makes it illegal to text or use any other hand-held device while driving. The other hand-held device can be a Kindle, an iPhone, a notebook, etc.

How These New 2012 Driving Laws Affect Your Insurance

As with any other driving laws, the new 2012 driving laws will directly affect your insurance premiums if you are ticketed. Violations for these new laws are as varied as the states that enacted them. The violations and can range from a warning ticket and required attendance in a traffic school class to a huge fine and a point in your driving record for each infraction in one stop (California puts one point on your record for every child not buckled in properly).

If you don’t keep up with these new laws and you end up having points added to your record due to a violation, you will see your insurance rates go up. The size of the increase will depend on the how serious the violation is. As an example, getting a ticket for not having you child in a booster seat is not going to cause the ridiculously high rate increase that getting a DUI will.

To keep your insurance rates down, do you best to keep up with your states new 2012 driving laws to avoid any tickets.