How long does a Careless Driving charge stay on your record in Ontario?
Here’s the short answer – 3 years.
Now, when does that three years start? Does it start on the date that you got the ticket (offense date)? Or, does it start on the date that you were convicted in court (conviction date)?
Conviction date
A Careless Driving charge does not go on your record until the day you get convicted. So, it clears from your record three years after the conviction date.
How does this affect car insurance?
Your car insurance company will not even know that you have been charged with Careless Driving until at least the conviction date. Then, at your next renewal after the conviction, it will begin to affect your rates. The conviction is considered serious and, so, can affect your car insurance rates by quite a bit, depending on the insurance company.
Now, not every insurance company will insure you with a Careless Driving conviction. Most will consider you to be high risk and will cancel your next renewal.
If your renewal gets cancelled because your current insurance company considers you to be high risk, you’ll have to call a company that specializes in insuring high risk drivers, like us (our phone number is at the top of this page). Don’t stress over it, though; the rates might still be lower than you think. We have cheap rates.
After 3 years
After the three-year anniversary of the Careless Driving charge conviction date, the conviction will automatically be removed from your driver’s abstract and your car insurance policy will automatically renew at a lower rate. At this point, however, you can shop around for better rates, as you will qualify to be insured with all of the insurance companies that wouldn’t insure you while you still had the serious conviction.
