NYS Defensive Driver Course; How Does it Work?

Steven Ladd
horansolution.com
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Horan Companies, Inc
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Question #32 in the 100 insurance questions in 100 days series. By Steve Ladd of Horan Companies, Inc. in Baldwinsville, NY.
“How does the Defensive Driver Course work?” The Defensive Driver Course in New York State provides a 10% discount on collision, no-fault personal injury protection and liability portions of your auto insurance policy. Contrary to what a lot of people think and what the websites that promote this service say is it does not give you a 10% discount off the entirety of your insurance policy.
So if you have taken the course and you are getting a discount more than 10% off of those particular items as I’ve mentioned, then you are already paying too much for your insurance policy, for your auto, and you have now become beholden to that course and you have to continue to take it. You do deserve a better rate. You should have nothing more than a 10% discount off of those particular items and only those items there.
The course takes six hours to complete. You can take it in person or you can take it online. If you take it online, you have 30 days to complete it once you log in for the first time. You can go in and out of the course at will as long as you complete the full six hours within the 30-day period. There is no final exam, it’s just a time requirement.
Beyond that, it does not, in any way, remove tickets from your insurance history report. While it will reduce the number of points on your license, it has no impact, whatsoever, on pulling off prior violations on your license as it reports to the insurance industry. The discount is good for 36 months so you have three years from the time that you take the course until you would have to take it again if you decided to do so.
You’d want to take the course for every one driver on the policy who is assigned a car exclusively. For example, if a mother and son are both assigned to one vehicle, it would only make sense for the mother to take the course and not the son. Until the son gets his own vehicle and is the principal operator of that vehicle, only then would it be beneficial from a discount standpoint for the son to take the course.
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Baldwinsville, NY