A common concern after being pulled over by the Five-O, is “what kind of consequences am I going to face?” “What is the fallout going to be?” This varies depending on the person. Your experience as a driver (number of years), your claims history, whether you are a new driver (learner/graduated driver) and whether or not you’ve had a rough track record with the law. 

In Saskatchewan, SGI controls the regulations of our driving system. They have two programs that monitor your driving habits. 1. The Driver Improvement Program (DIP) and 2. The Safe Driver Recognition Program. These programs are designed to help safe drivers benefit from good driving habits and bad drivers paying additional premium for their higher risk behavior. 

1. The Driver Improvement Program tracks and monitors all the driving records for Saskatchewan drivers. This program is designed to help remove high risk driving habits, by penalizing those who show high-risk driving behaviors (ie. DUI, Texting and driving, at-fault accidents, etc.) They do this by applying sanctions against people who continue to exude these bad behaviors. This includes: fines, driver license re-testing, suspensions and traffic safety workshops like “driver improvement training.” 
2. Safe Driver Recognition Program – this is an incentive program to reward those who practice safe driving habits. Based on the scale it determines your discounted rate, with 0 being the base rate. If you end up dropping below 0 (based on bad driving habits) you could face financial penalties. 

	Points	Discount
Neutral Zone	0	Premium Base
	1	2%
	2	4%
	3	6%
	4	8%
Good Driver Zone	5	10%
	6	12%
	7	14%
	8	16%
	9	18%
	10	20%
	11	20%
	12	20%
	13	20%
	14	20%
Great Driver Zone	15	20%
	16	20%
	17	20%
	18	20%
	19	20%
	20	20%
	21	21%
	22	22%
Safest Driver Zone	23	23%
	24	24%
	25	25%

Financial Penalties

Once you are in the penalty zone, you must drive with extreme caution as these fines can compound. For example. If you are at a -5 rating, you will already have paid a fine of $250 to SGI for the demerits. If you were to have an at-fault accident and drop -6 points to -11, you would now face a fine of $550. If you were to have a failure to stop at stop sign ticket the same year, you would drop an additional 4 points to -15 and would be charged $750 over and above the traffic fine issued by the officer. 

	Points	Penalty per Incident ($1,000 Max)
	-1	$50
	-2	$100
	-3	$150
	-4	$200
Penalty Zone	-5	$250
	-6	$300
	-7	$350
	-8	$400
	-9	$450
	-10	$500

How do I leave the Penalty Zone? 

Driving safely without incidents is the only way to escape the Penalty Zone. You can do this by driving 1 year at a time to crawl out year by year. After 3 consecutive years of safe driving, you will snap back to zero on the scale and will start accumulating safety discounts the following year.

These discounts are applicable to personal vehicles that you register under your personal name. If you have a business or farm corporation, you would fall under the Business Recognition Program.

What is the Business Recognition Program? 

This program rewards businesses that have a good claims history, offering a potential discount of up to 15% on their basic insurance. This is available in almost all vehicle classes, including – A, C, D, IRP, F, L PB, PC, PS, PT, LV.

This discount is based on the loss ratio or premiums paid to claims incurred. If you have more claims paid than premiums paid, you could fall into a surcharge zone where you need to pay more for your insurance as you have become higher risk. To learn more about this program, please click here. 

It is always important to practice safe driving habits and to always be prepared before operating a vehicle. Making sure the vehicle is registered and your driver’s license is valid is a crucial piece of information as those fines are not only $580, but you can be stuck with the entire cost of the claim as your insurance is not applicable, whether or not you are at-fault or not. This can be financially devastating, so PLEASE, double check this to make sure before operating a vehicle. We want you and your family to arrive to your destination safe and sound. As SGI says, “take care out there!”