Our Cincinnati DUI Defense Team Can Help You
Insurance is an extremely complicated and complex piece of financial innovation that allows you to protect yourself in case something bad happens. The only quarrel that many individuals have with the above statement is the complex and complicated aspect. What makes insurance complicated and complex are the parts we as buyers of insurance do not understand prior to picking an insurance company.
For buyers, insurance is a simple bet. Effectively buying insurance is making a bet that something bad will happen to you or the things owned. That unfortunate situation is likely to cause a financial loss. Insurance brokers will take up the other side of the bet. For example, you buy car insurance because your car might get stolen or damaged. The insurer makes a bet that no such thing will happen or if it does, it will not be as financially damaging.
The insurer makes that bet after running numbers and numbers of data they collect or obtain from various sources. Additionally, as members of the business industry, they at the return they could generate on an investment. When they are estimating the possibility that you may file a claim, they are allowed to take almost anything into account – the government does not allow discrimination. Insurance brokers use any and all factors which they believe may have an impact on the risk of the claim. For car insurance, this includes the obvious things such as:
– Car Make and Model
– Where You Live (the prevalence of auto theft rates, crime rates etc.)
– Use of Preventative Methods (brake locks, GPS, alarms) which make the car harder to steal and/or easier to recover after an incident.
– Where You Park (underground, secure lots aren’t likely places for theft/damage)
However, insurance is a competitive industry where the lowest cost provider will have an edge has which leads to other factors as well. These include:
– Grades in High School, Scholarships
– Profession
– Car Color
– Driving Record
These factors all help the insurer create a behavior profile for you and help them decide whether you are more or less risky than the average person. The riskier you are, the more you pay for the same insurance coverage.
Let’s focus on that last factor, driving record. That is where a DUI or an OVI charge will become a factor in insurance rates. The little secret of insurance is that it is experience based. The statistics used to set your initial rate are nothing more than a base level risk assessment. The assessment is updated the more experience the insurer has with you as a customer. This is why your rates (probably) drop the longer you go without filing a claim or getting into trouble with the law. Some things have little or no impact (parking tickets, minor scratches) – driving under the influence is not one of those things. In fact, it is probably one of the worst things to have on your driving record because drunk driving leads to some of the worst accidents. Hence, it increases your insurance premiums.
More importantly for insurers, statistics show that people with such charges are likely to be repeat offenders, so the likelihood of the driver filing more claims against the insurance policy is high. DUI/OVI charges compound on one another as does your driving record, at some point you will even see insurance companies outright refuse to offer you a policy at all. At that point, you are at the mercy of the really expensive policies, not unlike being refused for a loan from banks and having to visit payday loan centers or worse. It is unlikely that an insurance company will outright refuse to insure you simply because they are in the business of insuring.
If you are charged with DUI or OVI in Ohio, you need to contact an attorney for help. An attorney will be able to dissect the factors of your case and decide what type of defense route to take in fighting your charge. Our firm is experienced, thoughtful and prepared to fight for you.
