Can One Speeding Ticket Affect Your Credit Score?

Going a few miles per hour over the speed limit could cost you thousands of dollars on a mortgage, if you can get one at all. However, a speeding ticket does not always damage your credit rating, because the governing authority decides how to collect speeding fines. Thus, you should make a good faith attempt to pay the fine.

Identification

A single speeding ticket can affect your credit. Although governments do not report tickets directly to the credit reporting bureaus, the government can send the fine to a collection agency who then reports the debt to the credit bureaus. Collection accounts are one of the seven deadly sins that can appear on a credit report and take over 100 points off of your credit rating.

Time Frame

A collection account for any kind of debt affects your credit rating for seven years, even if you pay off the entire balance. If you have an excessive amount of fines, the government can sue you too. Any civil judgment involving money affects your credit rating about the same way as a collection account and for seven years.

FICO 8

Even if your government sends the account to a collection agency, the account may not affect your credit rating. The FICO 8 credit scoring system does not lower your credit rating when you have a collection account worth less than an original balance of $100. However, if you apply for credit with a lender that uses an earlier version of the software, the account will damage your credit rating.

Tip

You usually have at least 60 days to pay a speeding ticket before a government will consider sending it to a collection agency. Most courts will allow you to put a down payment on any fine and then have you pay it off in installments. You can also try to fight the ticket in court. For example, if you were speeding to get someone to the hospital because of a medical emergency, the court might waive the ticket. Many courts will remove the speeding ticket from your record after you take a defensive driving course.