A new study concludes that insurers jack up rates for Evanston residents less after a speeding ticket than they do for residents anywhere else in the Chicago metro area.
The study, from a financial site called Nerd Wallet, offers no explanation for why that was the case, and its data was based on a fairly limited sample of hypothetical rate quotes.
But it concluded that the insurers studied would raise an Evanston resident’s insurance premium just 8.67 percent for the five years after a speeding ticket.
Increases in other areas ranged as high at 17.2 percent in DeKalb and 14.75 percent in Northbrook.
Insurance premiums for drivers without a speeding ticket were not especially low in Evanston, coming in around the middle of the pack at $1,055.
But even in Evanston the insurance penalty for getting a speeding ticket dwarfs the $120 speeding fine itself, for traveling less than 15 miles over the limit.
The insurance premium increase over five years adds $457 here to the total cost of getting caught going too fast, according to the Nerd Wallet study.