After Atlanta Falcons running back Michael Turner was arrested and jailed on charges of drunk driving after his Monday Night Football game last week (which his team won, in part due to his touchdown), he faces not only legal charges and public scrutiny, but another effect: his car insurance will surely go up.
DUI charges in states across the country result in changes to the offender’s car insurance policy once their insurer finds out about it. But just how much you will be charged for your coverage, and who will now cover you, can sometimes result in big problems for the driver going forward, as in the case of Georgia drivers like Turner.
“Typically what we see is when people have a DUI, their insurance gets canceled once their insurance company finds out,” according to Wendy Jordan, an auto insurance manager at Chastain and Associates in Athens, Ga.
But your policy being canceled depends on what company you are with, she adds. Some companies provide high-risk car insurance to people with DUIs, but they will be charged more.
How much more? That depends on a number of factors.
“It depends on your credit, age, type of vehicle,” Jordan said. “If you are a 50-year-old man and you get a DUI, it’s not going to cost you near as much as if you are a 20-year-old.”
But just how the insurer finds out about a DUI depends. There are two scenarios.
First, if you have a car accident and get a DUI as a result of that accident, your insurer will find out immediately in the course of dealing with the accident, Jordan said.
But, in the second scenario, if you are a regular citizen (read: not famous) and have a situation like Turner’s, you may have it happen only months or years later. That’s because in cases where there is no accident, insurance companies find out in the course of their random driving history checks. (People don’t call up their insurance companies and offer this kind of information.)
Turner was doing 97 mph, going 32 miles over the speed limit, according to police reports, when a police officer clocked his speed and pulled him over, resulting in the DUI arrest. You can be sure his insurance company found out about his arrest because it was all over the news. But in the case of a regular citizen, the charge might not be found out until one of these random driving history checks.
“Insurance companies like Progressive do these checks every six months, but others may not do it for a year or three years,” according to Jordan. That means that you may not pay more for a while. And just why they check you in these random driving tests has to do with a number of factors, like account activity such as paying on time, etc. If you don’t have much account activity, according to Jordan, they may not check you for a while.
So while a person is dealing with the legal ramifications of their DUI, they will also have coverage issues. They may be dropped and will definitely face rate hikes once their coverage provider finds out. But it depends just when that is.
Unless you’re Michael Turner. He faces it all, immediately.
