Can A Ticket damage My Credit? Yep

Can A ticket damage my credit?

Your driving does not have anything to do with your creditworthiness, so just why should an unpaid ticket torpedo your credit scores? Just like medical bills, they do.

Norman Asks:
,
I got a photo radar ticket in a state besides the one in which I live. I have not yet paid the citation, which is labeled a civil penalty as opposed to a criminal penalty (since photo tickets apparently are difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt).
I have received a letter saying that if I do not pay the fees, the county will hire a collection agency, which will then affect my credit. Can my credit actually get dinged for this? What do traffic tickets and credit have to do with each other?


NORMAN, You should pay that traffic ticket. When an unpaid traffic ticket is given to a collection agency, the driver's credit scores could fall, perhaps considerably.


Traffic tickets and credit may not seem related (and really, they are not), but consider that ticket like a debt owed to the county that issued the citation. Even though they are not a lender, the county wants its money and definitely will take steps to collect. Unfortunately, should you not pay, the municipality appears ready to use a powerful technique to more emphatically urge you to do so -- one that isn't limited to traffic citations.

If a municipality turns a consumer debt, such as a moving violation, parking ticket or library fine, over to a collections firm, and the collections firm reports it as being a collection account to the credit reporting companies, it will have an effect on an individual's credit score.
Because lower credit scores make borrowing harder and costly, that risk makes for a more convincing argument for you to pay.
The situation isn't entirely unusual. I am seeing this more and more on credit reports - even library fines! Counties are hurting for funding so they are doing everything possible to capture some of that debt. In other words, receiving a ticket isn't what hurts your credit scores, but waiting such a long time to make a payment that it ends up in collections.
"While traffic citations aren't reported to credit reporting agencies, accounts in collection are often reported to bureaus in some jurisdictions.
Just how bad can the damage get? FICO states the effect varies, depending on such factors as the age of the collections account and other delinquent accounts, but indicates that debtors with high FICO scores (800 and over) could experience nearly 100-point declines.