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If there are no points, then there’s no point in fighting a traffic ticket, right?

Wrong!

If you get a traffic ticket with no points, you can still suffer serious penalties. These tickets can still carry steep fines, surcharges, and other penalties. Rack up enough of them, and those penalties will only get worse.

Ordinarily, points affect your license in many ways. The court can also increase the penalties for tickets as your point total increases. That’s normally the main worry with traffic tickets.

But traffic tickets with no points can still wreak havoc on your finances.

How Traffic Tickets with No Points Affect Your Car Insurance

Zero-point tickets usually won’t affect your car insurance premiums—but they can. 

If you live in Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, or one of the other states that don’t have driver license point systems, none of your tickets will have any points. For example, a speeding ticket for traveling 11 miles per hour over the posted limit in Hawaii will have zero points. In New York, that same ticket will have four points. 

Since every state is different, insurers make their own guidelines. According to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), car insurance providers have their own point systems. If your state doesn’t apply points to a traffic ticket, that doesn’t mean your insurer won’t.

How Investigators Look at Your Traffic Tickets

States like New York allow investigators and insurance providers to look at the last four years of your driving record. That means a single traffic ticket can increase your insurance premiums for four years. However, those investigators aren’t interested in every single ticket.

According to Allstate, there are only a few things they look at.

Allstate’s investigators look at the following things:

• Your driving history.
• How many tickets you’ve gotten before this one.
• How long ago your last violation was.
• How dangerously you were driving.
• Where the violation took place. 

Even if your traffic ticket has no points, it still might increase because of one of these five things. 

How Traffic Tickets with No Points Affect Your Driving Record

Traffic tickets with no points tend not to have much of an impact on your driving record. For the most part, these tickets are little more than fines and fees. But if you get another ticket down the road (pun intended), the consequences can be more severe.

A conviction is a conviction. If you plead guilty to a traffic ticket, it doesn’t matter whether the ticket has points or not. The next time you get any kind of traffic ticket, the court will look at your driving record when determining the penalties. If you have previously gotten multiple traffic tickets with no points, then the court won’t be inclined to go easy on you.

How Traffic Tickets with No Points Are Still the Better Option

Zero points are better than one. Think of traffic ticket points like golf: The lower your score, the better. Even though zero-point traffic tickets can cause many problems for your insurance and your future court cases, they are much less harmful than traffic tickets with points.

In the legal world, there is a process known as plea bargaining. This is where a traffic lawyer comes in handy. Plea bargaining is when your lawyer and the court sit down together and talk about pleading guilty to a lesser charge. 

For example, if you get a small speeding ticket for going five miles per hour over the posted limit, your lawyer might be able to bargain that down to a simple non-moving violation. That’s basically a parking ticket, as far as your driver license is concerned. And parking tickets don’t affect your driver license.

In other words, plea bargaining can turn a multi-point ticket into a no-point ticket. That does a whole lot more than just reduce the points. It can also prevent your license from being suspended, prevent your insurance premiums from increasing, decrease the fine amount, and remove additional fees.

Plea Bargaining Vs. Fighting Your Ticket

If a cop gives you a ticket with no points, there’s not really much of a point in plea bargaining (but ask your lawyer anyway). Instead, the best option for you is likely to plead not guilty and dispute the ticket in court. If a cop gives you a ticket with a bunch of points, there’s a lot more gray area.

Plea bargaining and fighting your ticket are both valid options when you’re trying to protect your driver license. But knowing which option is best for you can be a challenge. That’s why it’s important to speak with a traffic lawyer before making any decisions.

Whether you want to plea bargain or to fight your ticket, you’re going to have to start off pleading not guilty. When you plead not guilty, you start the traffic ticket dispute process. Although the name can be misleading, plea bargaining is part of that process.

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