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Driver penalty points and how they affect you

You cannot pay a fine to avoid driver penalty points. It's better to pay attention when driving.
Tim Schewe

I’ve always understood penalty points to be a kind of score keeping method to assign a level of risk to the breach of a traffic rule. The more dangerous the violation, the more penalty points that would be assigned to a driving conviction. Rack up too many points in a set period of time and you would have to pay ICBC premiums and risk a driving prohibition from RoadSafetyBC. Regardless of the fact that penalty points have been a part of driving in B.C. for many years, they are generally poorly understood.

The penalty point scheme is set up under Division 28 of the Motor Vehicle Act Regulations. Currently it states that when a driver is convicted of an offence, ICBC will assign penalty points to a person’s driving record according to four schedules which contains two, three, six and 10 point levels.

Each year ICBC looks at the total number of points you received during a 12-month assessment period that ends five months before your birthday. The assessment period may include driving offences during an earlier period which have only recently been recorded on your driving record. If you collect more than three points on your driving record during the assessment period, you’ll pay a Driver Penalty Point premium. Depending on the type of offence, you may also be assessed a Driver Risk premium.

RoadSafetyBC decides on driving prohibitions set out in the Driver Improvement Program Policies and Guidelines. In general, a driver in the Graduated Licensing Program may expect a sanction after only one or two tickets in a 24 month period. Experienced drivers have much more latitude. Depending on the type of offence, it could take as many as 15 penalty points over two years before action is taken.

Is there any way that I could just pay a fine and not receive the penalty points? This is a question heard frequently in traffic court. The only connection between penalty points and traffic court is on whether you are convicted of the offence as a driver or not. If you are convicted, the offence goes on your driving record and ICBC will assess points.