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A speeding ticket costs an arm and a leg in most states. And sometimes, they can even cost your car! 

Cities across the country have been known to confiscate vehicles for auction to pay off unresolved parking and traffic ticket debt. 

But how much does a ticket cost exactly? Well, that depends on where you live. Here’s a quick state-by-state breakdown of speeding ticket costs.

Speeding Ticket Costs By State

Secondary Costs of Speeding Tickets

Think $500 is enough? Guess again. Local governments charge much more than just the stated fine amount. Courts can also hold you liable for things like surcharges, court costs, attorney fees, and more. In many states, these costs can double the price of the ticket.

For example, some mild traffic tickets in New York can carry a $45 fine. Add on a $93 surcharge and the government has just tripled the cost of your ticket.

Once the government is through with your wallet, it passes it on over to the private sector. Insurance premiums can increase, debt collectors can come knocking. Just about everything bad that can happen financially will, unless you have the means to either beat your ticket or pay it immediately.

Of course, there are also the physical and mental costs. Stress and strain also take a toll on people when fighting the inane bureaucracy that is traffic court. Think about it! The Department of Motor Vehicles isn’t really known for being fun, friendly, and fast.

Here are three more secondary costs that come after the original ticket’s fine.

Defensive Driving Courses

If you’re ever caught breaking your local speeding law by well over the limit, you might be charged with reckless driving. In some counties, that means taking a defensive driving course.

You may have heard that defensive driving courses can help you get out of a ticket. Oftentimes, the successful completion of one of these courses is enough to convince the judge to drop your case and dismiss your ticket. However, sometimes, these courses are mandatory, court-ordered, and in addition to your ticket.

In those cases, you’ll have to do exactly what the court demands. That often means taking a weekend or two to spend a few hours in a classroom studying the rules of the road. These classes are most often a requirement associated with DUI convictions, but they’re also sometimes mandated for non-DUI-related offenses.

The length of these courses varies from county to county and state to state. In some cases, you might only be required to take a four-hour course one saturday evening. In other cases, you might be required to spend an entire weekend taking courses for a total of 12 hours. It primarily depends on the severity of your offense, the specific laws regarding defensive driving courses, and the judge’s disposition.

Although these courses are often free to take, they come with other financial burdens. Economists call these “opportunity costs.” Opportunity costs are what you have to miss out on to do something else. Although you might not have to pay tuition for a defensive driving course, you might still have to take off work. That means you’ll be losing money in lost wages, effectively costing you for the class.

License Suspension Fees

If a court suspends your license, you will eventually have to pay license suspension fees. These fees are most often associated with the cost of lifting the suspension and releasing your license back to you from the government. If you do not pay these fees, your license will remain suspended for the foreseeable future.

There are two kinds of license suspensions: definite and indefinite. Each of these types still prevents you from driving. So, no matter what kind of suspension the court hands down to you, you should not get behind the wheel of any motor vehicle.

Definite license suspensions suspend your license for a set period of time. Often, that period of time is only 30-90 days. However, there are some violations that can get it suspended for a year or longer. Once the suspension period has expired, you can pay the suspension fees to get your driver license back. But, if you don’t pay those fees, your license will be indefinitely suspended.

An indefinite suspension can happen for any number of reasons. What matters most is that you understand how they play into the costs of traffic tickets. If your license has been indefinitely suspended, you will not be able to get it back until you do what the court tells you to do. In the case of traffic ticket fines and fees, that often means paying back all outstanding balances.

In other words: Don’t pay, don’t drive.

Higher Insurance Costs

One of the worst parts about getting a traffic ticket is having your insurance premiums increase. If you are ever convicted of a traffic-related offense, you can fall into that trap. Fortunately, insurance providers usually will not increase your insurance premiums for non-moving violations. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of traffic violations are moving violations.

If you are caught speeding, according to a report published by The Zebra, you can expect to face an insurance increase of 23.2%. Let’s say you live in New York, where the average annual price for insurance is $1,688. To get the full annual increase, we multiply $1,688 by 0.232. That equals $391.62.

That’s already more than the maximum speeding fine in a few states and it’s not even the end of things. In most cases, that increase stays on the books for as long as your conviction does. The average speeding ticket stays on your record for between two and four years, which means you could end up paying $1,566.48 in additional costs.

Can You Plead Down the Cost of Your Speeding Ticket?

Although you cannot plead down the cost of suspension fees or other secondary costs, you can help prevent those costs from going on the books in the first place. That’s because of a practice called plea bargaining.

Plea bargaining is the practice of negotiating with the court to reduce the charges against you under the impression that you will plead guilty to the reduced charges. This is usually a last resort reserved for when you think you have an unwinnable case. By plea bargaining, you can potentially reduce a reckless driving charge to a lesser speeding violation.

That can help reduce the fine as well as the insurance premium increase, which can save you hundreds of dollars. Plea bargaining is also a useful tool when points are on the table. If you manage to bargain a moving violation down to a non-moving violation, you can potentially avoid getting any points on your driver license.

That means you will not be likely to have your license suspended due to having too many points. Of course, plea bargaining should only be considered when you have no chance of winning your case. If you have a chance of winning your case, consider fighting it instead.

Fighting the Cost of a Speeding Ticket

WinIt is an app that helps connect you with traffic ticket lawyers in your area so that you can fight the cost of a speeding ticket. Unlike pleading guilty or plea bargaining, fighting your ticket in court can save you thousands of dollars on fines, surcharges, fees, and other costs.

You can choose to fight your speeding ticket alone or with the help of an expert. Fighting alone can be more cost efficient than fighting with a lawyer, but only if you know that you’re going to win. And if there’s one thing that we know about traffic court, it’s that you never know if you’re going to win.

The best way to increase the chances of beating your ticket and saving money is to hire a lawyer. Lawyers know the law like nobody else. Those on the WinIt app would be more than happy to put that knowledge to the test, flexing their competitive sides to help you win your case.

So what are you waiting for? Download the WinIt app, get out there, and start fighting your ticket today.