In Mass. you pay and pay
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
I hold in my hand a speeding ticket, which I deserve.
I was going 75 mph in a 65 mph zone. It doesn't matter that other motorists passed me at faster speeds and didn't get caught. It doesn't matter that millions of people drive more than 10 mph over the speed limit every day. I was breaking the law and the police officer who stopped me was doing his job.
I didn't beg or cry or plead when he pulled me over, though I would have if I'd know what was going to happen. I didn't even tell him that my father had been a police officer.
"You want to hear my excuse?" I said.
"Why not? I've heard everything," he answered, almost smiling.
I related my story and he listened. Then he wrote me up, and I went my way. I figured I'd pay the $50 and be done with it.
But then it began. The input from friends.
"You know what this is going to do to your auto insurance, don't you?"
No, I said. I didn't. It was my first speeding ticket ever. It wouldn't do a thing to my insurance.
"You better check on that," one friend told me. "I think it affects your insurance rate for years."
I called my agent the next morning.
"This won't affect my yearly premium, will it?" I asked, certain that 30 years of safe driving must count for something.
But, incredibly, they don't. For the next six years I will be charged hundreds of dollars more to insure my car, not because I was the cause of some terrible accident or because I cost the insurance company anything, but because on a sunny, spring afternoon I got caught driving 10 mph over the speed limit on the Mass Pike.
"Here's the way it works," my insurance agent explained. "If you had a speeding ticket in 1987 or if you had an accident, those points would have dropped off this year and your safe driver points would improve. What happens now is you have six years before the 1993 year washes out. So you're going to be paying that penalty until 1999."
People can knock over tombstones in cemeteries and write hate-filled graffiti on walls. Robbers can steal from old ladies, push them down and break their bones. Men can beat their wives and abuse their children. And not one of them will be punished for six years.
But get one speeding ticket and in this state, you pay and you pay and you pay.
How much I asked? What does this mean in dollars and cents?
"It's a percentage of the premium," my agent continued. "For the person who's driving a 10-year-old car with no comprehensive and collision, it could be as little as $70 a year. But if you go out and get a 1993 car with full insurance, it could mean $150 to $200 a year."
So the bottom line is a $50 ticket ends up costing between $740 and $1,200, plus the $50. This isn't just stupid, it's unjust. The punishment does not fit the crime.
I can appeal the ticket, of course, which is what I will do, which is what thousands of motorists are choosing to do these days. They take time off from work and appear in court, wasting their time and the court's time and the citing officer's time, forcing him or her off their beat into court, making work where there should be none, clogging up an already clogged and overburdened system.
These appeals cost the state, not just in time and productivity but in money. And it's all unnecessary. Motorists would pay their fines, if that's all they had to pay. They'd write a check, and the commonwealth would be that much wealthier.
But the way it works now, the only people making money are the insurance companies.
I did not run a red light. I did not drink and drive. I am not an unsafe driver, and I refuse to allow my insurance company to brand me one.
A footnote: Recently, a motorist hit my car, which was parked at the time. No one was in it and the person who hit it didn't stop.
I was furious that someone would be so dishonest. I couldn't understand why he didn't leave a note. Motorists are required to have insurance, and this is what insurance is for.
Now I understand. He'd have to pay for six years, too. My bumper would cost him plenty. No wonder he drove away.
