One of the more popular ways to beat a traffic ticket in Lawrence also is one of the more controversial in the insurance industry.

Lawrence, like many cities, offers people the chance to pay a higher fine in exchange for having their traffic ticket – everything from speeding to running a red light – reduced to a nonmoving violation.

The nonmoving violation won’t show up on driving records, which insurance companies use to set rates.

Lynn Knauf, with the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, said such practices drive insurance companies “crazy.”

“It doesn’t really give you any picture of a person’s driving record,” Knauf said. “It puts insurance companies in the position of relying on driving records that have no real meaning.”

People who have three or fewer traffic tickets within the past three years can be considered for the program. People with one ticket pay double the fine, people with two tickets pay triple the fine and people with three tickets pay quadruple the fine. In exchange for the higher fine, the ticket is reduced to “inattentive driving,” a nonmoving violation.

Jerry Little, the city’s lead prosecutor, said someone caught doing 90 mph in a school zone isn’t going to get the deal. Someone who has had all three of the allowable tickets within the past year also may not get the deal.

“It is just a courtesy. There is no legal obligation on our part to offer them the deal,” he said.

Little said the city had a good reason for offering the deals – and it is not the extra money it generates for the city’s coffers.

“The philosophy is to avoid a trial,” Little said. “If they come in and say ‘I want to keep this off my driving record,’ and we don’t have a policy that allows us to do that, they have nothing to lose. They might as well go to trial and take their chances. We would have hundreds of trials a month.”

The city prosecutor’s office, which has two attorneys, handles 20 to 30 trials per month. Little did not have exact numbers of how many people take advantage of the deal but estimated it was more than 50 percent of people who receive a traffic ticket. The court in 2004 dealt with 24,000 traffic tickets, and 9,200 of them were speeding tickets.

Amy Mark, an Overland Park resident, was one of several people who took advantage of the deal Thursday morning. She paid $222 – triple the $60 fine plus court costs – for running a red light. Mark, who said she had used similar systems in other communities, was happy to keep the incident off her record. And she wasn’t shedding any tears for the insurance industry.

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Mark said.

Larry Magill, executive vice president with the Kansas Association of Insurance Agents, said people may not be fooling the insurance companies as much as they think. He said policies like Lawrence’s – along with a state law that keeps most speeding tickets that are less than 10 mph over the speed limit off a driving record – have caused insurance companies to change their evaluation methods.

He said many insurance companies are now using credit scores of individuals to assess drivers’ risk levels. That method has been controversial with some consumer groups, but Magill said studies have found a correlation between bad drivers and bad credit scores. And importantly, Magill said, credit scores are difficult to manipulate.

Magill said his organization hasn’t made any push to pass legislation that would stop policies like those of Lawrence.

“You’re always going to have those when you have politicians who think they can help keep people’s insurance premiums down,” Magill said.

There’s also not any discussion on the City Commission to change the practice. City Commissioner David Schauner said he’s convinced the city offers the deals for the right reasons. He said he didn’t think the deals were motivated by any extra money they may create for the city. Estimates on how much the deals add to the city’ coffers were not available. The entire Municipal Court generates about $2.5 million in city revenue.

Schauner, who also is a lawyer, said the city is motivated by a need to keep justice moving. He said without plea bargaining, courts would quickly become overloaded and grind to a halt. He said such policies just make it incumbent upon the city to have responsible prosecutors.

“We have always had to rely on the good judgment of prosecutors to find a balance,” Schauner said. “That is the tough part of being a prosecutor.”