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.

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).

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.

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.

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 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.

Compare auto insurance quotes.

Andy Edmonds: I live in New York and was reading your blog on “No fault insurance“, when I decided to compare auto insurance quotes online. Are there any expected changes for this.

Response: As per the latest information received from on 24th November 2009, New York as per the statement of Superintendent James J. Wrynn said that they have made all efforts to stop the abuse of no fault insurance. The cost of each no-fault claim has gone up by more than half in the past five years, and all New Yorkers with auto insurance are paying for this. The department said its fraud investigations bureau received more than 11,000 complaints alleging no-fault fraud this year to date, a 7 percent increase over the total for all of 2008. The number of no-fault arrests in 2008 was 52 percent greater than in 2007.

As per Paul Magaril, regional manager of Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI) the New York auto insurance rates are the second highest auto insurance premiums in USA. This is almost 50 percent more than the rest of the country. As per PCI the cost of the no fault system of New York the cost of claims is estimated $1.2 million per day. This is the result of frauds like over-utilization of health system. The medical cost is very high.

The Insurers think it is time to stop the frauds and make some changes which will come into effect from January 1st 2010. The changes would take time to be implemented and passed. However, here are the changes which are porposed :

The main idea behind this is to protect consumers the auto insurance frauds have to be stopped so that the low auto insurance rates are available for the customers.

I am sure we all would appreciate the changes, in the long run once we get low auto insurance quotes and start saving on car insurance.