Naturally, your driving record plays an enormous part in the rates you pay — and contrary to what some drivers out there think, you do have control over this. A speeding ticket, a DWI charge, a charge of reckless driving — these violations can cause you to be penalized for up to five years, in addition to making your rates outrageous. It just is not worth it.

Even your credit rating affects your premiums. A driver with a poor credit rating, or no credit at all, will generally have to pay higher rates.

Believe it or not, these days even your occupation will affect what you pay for car insurance. Some occupations are considered riskier than others — like someone who delivers newspapers, for instance.

Studies also show that the more education you have, the less you may have to pay.

Naturally, there is nothing you can do about your age — until you get older. And there is nothing you can do about your gender — unless … well, that is a whole different blog under a whole different category.

Anyway, some things that cause you to pay higher — or lower — rates may seriously surprise you. For instance, if you are married, you are going to pay less than a single driver.

Where you live determines what you pay as well. Drivers who live in congested cities and/or high risk areas — areas where there is a high rate of car theft — pay higher premiums. Conversely, in rural areas, areas with less traffic, and so on, car insurance rates tend to be much less expensive.

Affordable auto insurance. We all want it, right? And yet, millions of drivers — hundreds of millions of drivers, more likely — bemoan the fact that they cannot get affordable auto insurance … or so they firmly believe.

The fact of the matter is that many drivers are not even aware of the many, many factors that can have an effect on their car insurance rates. There are so many things that can make you pay more — or less. You can control some of these. Some factors, however, are beyond your control. We are going to look at those first.

To begin with, your age is a factor. It may come as a surprise that drivers between the ages of fifty and sixty five statistically have the safest driving records. Drivers under twenty five are considered the highest risk.

Your gender plays a part in your premiums as well. In spite of all the jokes about female drivers, for instance, they pay lower rates — they are considered less risky.

As stated, car insurance companies are interested in this study and others like it. Their business is based on risks. As such, they are using studies like this one to see whether or not the results can be used to raise car insurance rates for drivers who are caught in a distracted state while they are driving.

What that means is that, someday quite soon, you may be in danger of extremely high rates if you are caught texting while you are driving. Every time another accident occurs because a driver is sending or receiving text messages, the risks of this become significantly higher.

There is, of course, an easy way to avoid this as an individual: do not text while you are driving. Just don’t. Nothing can be that urgent, and if it is, place a call and put the phone on speaker or use a headset instead. It must be said, however, that you will be safer still if you leave your phone alone until the car is safely in park somewhere.

Just recently, VTTI — the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute — put together a study devoted to text messaging … and car insurance companies happen to be very interested in that study, in terms of how texting while driving will ultimately affect the car insurance industry.

Those who text while driving are twenty three times more likely to have a collision than drivers who are not texting.

A number of other studies combined with this one show that out of one hundred percent of all traffic accidents, seventy one percent of them involve drivers who are basically not driving because they are distracted by something else.

Now, we all know that the safer you are, the more your car insurance company approves. They want you to be safe. You pose less of a risk this way. Given the findings in the study by VTTI, what do you think the implications are going to be on car insurance rates?

So, people are driving less — we have established that fact. And that is, believe it or not, the very reason that the cost of gas is causing insurance rates to go down.

People are driving less largely because gas is so expensive. When people drive less, they are not as at risk for having an accident and having to file an insurance claim, or for getting a traffic violation and getting points on their driving record.

Insurance companies like it when your risks goes down. It means they are less likely to have to pay for injuries or car repairs.

That is a big one — being at less risk for an injury derived in a car accident. The less you drive, the less at risk you are. Your car insurance company loves that, and you can see a dip in your rates because of it.

There have been some very interested studies recently, launched by the government. In short, they show that people tend to drive less these days, and that they drive fewer miles when they do drive. This in turn leads to far less accidents and thus less injuries as well.

People are driving less because of the cost of gas, of course. Many of them are even turning to hybrid vehicles. Others are relying on methods of public transportation to get around. People are carpooling, they are starting to combine their trips — all of this leads to people spending a lot less time on the road.

You are probably still wondering how this creates a link between the high cost of gas and the low cost of premiums. Do not worry, we will be illuminating that link in the very next post.

The cost of gas still presents a veritable nightmare for a lot of drivers, and understandably so.  It seems like when gas prices stabilize, we are only able to enjoy it on a superficial level, because we know darn well that sooner or later — sooner rather than later, more often than not — they will go up yet again.  We know that during spring when all the schools go on break, the cost of gas will spike.  We know that during summer, prices will absolutely sky rocket.  We know that in November and December, during the holidays, they will go up all over again.

In other words, we know that there really, realistically seems to be no end in sight.

But I bet a lot of us do not know that these high gas prices can lead to low car insurance rates.  How?  Well, we will be discussing that in the coming posts for this series.