Do not think that you can ignore this article, because you never drive on one of Alberta’s highways. If you even sit in a vehicle that has its tires on the surface of such a highway, you need to have automobile insurance. If you have failed to obtain such insurance coverage, then you could get hit with some severe fines or penalties.
If you happen to borrow a friend’s or relative’s vehicle, you must make sure that it is insured. Again, failure to carry out the requested action could place you in an uncomfortable position. You could get asked to pay a fine or suffer the consequences.
What would the consequences be?
The size of the fine determines the nature of the consequences. If police records show that you never before got behind the wheel of an uninsured vehicle, then your fine could be as low as $2,875 or as high as $10,000. If you failed to pay that fine, you could go to jail for 45 days to 6 months.
If payment of that fine or penalty did not push you to buy car insurance, you might learn about another set of consequences. Drivers’ records include information on the payment of a traffic-related fine or penalty. Drivers with such a blot on their record get a steeper fine, if caught without insurance for a second time. That larger fine falls between $5,000 and $20,000.
As expected, failure to pay that larger fine invites announcement of a harsher penalty. That harsher penalty would amount to at least 60 days in jail. It could even be extended to as much as 6 months of jail time.
Costs incurred by those failing to buy car insurance extends beyond fines and penalties
Insurance companies get the names of those men and women that got caught without coverage for a motored vehicle. Insurers make a point of increasing the rate paid by such individuals, whenever any single one of them does decide to buy the protective coverage. This added expense comes on top of two others.
An uninsured vehicle must get towed off of the highway. The vehicle’s owner must pay the amount charged by the towing service. In addition, the towed vehicle gets taken to a storage facility. The uninsured driver or vehicle owner must pay the cost of having the stored set-of-wheels removed from such a facility. Additionally, the victim must have a personal injury lawyer in Spruce Grove to represent their compensation claim, if they have been injured.
The possibility of an additional penalty
Unlike the other penalties, this one does not call for sending the guilty driver to jail. Instead it consists of a denial of driving privileges. That denial takes the form of a suspension, namely suspension of the driver’s license. This can prove costly, because the driver must choose an alternate means of transportation, when traveling to and from work.