North Dakota to start reporting all traffic violations to insurance companies

FARGO — It’s pretty well known that a speeding ticket in North Dakota won’t cost you much. Some aren’t afraid to punch the pedal, willingly risking a few extra bucks to get from point A to point B faster.

North Dakota has well over 100 moving violations drivers can be pulled over for. However, many aren’t reported to insurance companies including texting and driving.

Currently, only violations that are three points or more are reported to insurance companies. As of Aug. 1, all moving violations of a point or more will be sent to insurance agencies.

“Now they will make it on to that record where they can potentially affect somebody’s insurance rates,” said North Dakota Highway Patrol Captain Bryan Niewind.

Lawmakers passed legislation this session at the request of the auto industry to make the rates more fair.

“When you take out a chunk of that record everybody has to pay more to account for that unknown. The less unknown we have, the more accurate that rate can be, which then should help the good drivers,” said North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread.

Since the 1970s, the North Dakota Department of Transportation was allowed to monitor a person’s total points to determine the status of their license but was not allowed to share any violations of two points or less with insurance companies.

“We’ve had a scenario where we had a driver who had a suspended license who was still able to access the insurance market place because DOT was not able to share the record, because it was all these two points and below,” Godfread said.

Godfread said that to his knowledge, North Dakota was the only state that did not share all violations with insurance companies.

The law is also supposed to relieve DOT employees of the burden of having to redact the information sent to insurance companies.

The highway patrol believes this will also make the roads safer as people aware of this quirky law have been willing to suck up a small fine knowing it would not impact their insurance.

“Obviously nobody wants to pay more for insurance. Hopefully that will help some people have the financial incentive to slow down, to make sure they are following the traffic laws that we have out there,” Niewind said.

Matt Henson is an Emmy award-winning reporter/photographer/editor for WDAY. Prior to joining WDAY in 2019, Matt was the main anchor at WDAZ in Grand Forks for four years. He was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended college at Lyndon State College in northern Vermont, where he was recognized twice nationally, including first place, by the National Academy for Arts and Science for television production. Matt enjoys being a voice for the little guy. He focuses on crimes and courts and investigative stories. Just as often, he shares tear-jerking stories and stories of accomplishment. Matt enjoys traveling to small towns across North Dakota and Minnesota to share their stories. He can be reached at mhenson@wday.com and at 610-639-9215. When he’s not at work (rare) Matt resides in Moorhead and enjoys spending time with his daughter, golfing and attending Bison and Sioux games.