Out of State Points, for Insurance Purposes (NJ)

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Deser2

Regarding the last part of your post - I’ve only received one moving violation during my driving life in NY - changing lanes in the midtown tunnel. I do have friends who have received TONS of them (a few who lost their licenses eventually). For my one ticket, and for many of my friend’s tickets, we plead not guilty, went to traffic court and then 1 of 2 things happened.

Either the cop didn’t show up which is an automatic dismissal in NY (if you plead not guilty and the cop doesn’t show up, tell the judge you would like to request that the ticket be dismissed and he’ll throw it out and you pay something like a $30 or $40 court “fee”).

As I recall it from when I lived in NY, the cop had 2 shots. Meaning the first time he missed the court date they would reschedule, and the second time they would drop it.

The other likely outcome, especially if you don’t have any/many violations) is that the ticket gets dropped down to a non-moving violation which means no points. Most of the time the fee will be higher but you avoid the negative consequences of points.

That would only be for a very minor ticket or some sort of extenuating circumstances. A 6 point violation is not going down to a non-moving violation.

[Deser2]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

As I recall it from when I lived in NY, the cop had 2 shots. Meaning the first time he missed the court date they would reschedule, and the second time they would drop it.

That would only be for a very minor ticket or some sort of extenuating circumstances. A 6 point violation is not going down to a non-moving violation.

Sure it will. It happened to me on a 3 or 4 point violation. I’ve also been in the traffic court on a few occassions where a 30mph above the limit ticket was reduced to a seat belt violation and some other non-moving violation. My friend paid about $100 more than he would have for the speeding ticket but avoided a huge point hit. It doesn’t happen every time, and it depends on the judge, but it happens WAY more than you think. I have extensive experience with this, although not in recent years, as most of my friends were involved in the street racing scene on Long Island. Needless to say they received a LOT of tickets.

[PorchePine]

@GreasyJack

Are you sure about that? In all the states I’ve had the misfortune to deal with, it’s basically a deferred prosecution and if you do the traffic school (and/or jump through whatever other hoops) the case doesn’t go forward and so there’s nothing to report to the public records places. Since you usually still have to pay the whole fine (and then some), the whole point of those deals is that it keeps the tickets off your record. If the insurance companies find out about them and ups your rate anyways, who would ever take one? The only situation I could see is if you’ve got enough tickets that you’re risking suspension, but at least IME they only offer you deals like that if you have a relatively clean record.

In Oregon, it doesn’t go on your DMV record. The fact that you got a ticket will show up in a criminal background check, however.

[GreasyJack]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Quite sure, though it may be unique to us.

Oh, okay, so looking at the NY points system it looks pretty harsh so I could see why you’d want to keep the points off even for a first violation. In the states I’m familiar with, you have to rack up a lot of tickets before you have to start worrying about your license. For example, to get my license suspended in my home state I’d need ten speeding tickets (or * two* deliberate vehicular homicides, which has always amused me.) It looks like in NY the magic number is 11 points in 18 months, so 6 points is nothing to trifle with.

@doreen

I don’t think that NY uses the deferred prosecution model, and I’m pretty sure that the infraction itself stays on your record in most cases ( which doesn’t mean individual courts may not dismiss the case after a defensive driving class is completed.) But it does remove the points from your record, and my understanding is that the insurance rate increases are based on points.

See the rest of the thread. In general the insurance companies don’t look at points, only convictions.