Do you want to know what the single hardest thing about working in the car insurance industry is? Trying to help our clients wade through the hundreds of definitions and nuances of "insurance-ese," a strange and foreign language only understood by insurance agents across the country and absolutely no one else. Some of that confusion goes hand in hand with understanding words and phrases like "tort" (not to be confused with a torte), "liability" and "maximum coverage." Some of it requires you to muddle through the multitude of ways "no fault" doesn't actually mean no one was at fault.

But sometimes it's as simple-and as complicated-as trying to explain that every car insurance company has its own definition of "good" when it comes to your driving record.

Most people have a pretty good idea of what it means to have a good driving record. After all, we learn from the moment we get our learner's permits that the last thing we want to do is be in an accident. Or run a stoplight. Or get caught trying to keep up with the speed of traffic on I-95 in the middle of the night (which averages somewhere around 20 mph over the speed limit). You know if any of these things are going to happen you're going to watch your car insurance rates go up.

So you know that if you have a smudged up record you're going to be considered a high risk in the eyes of your car insurance provider. But how high is high?

Believe it or not, car insurance companies are run by people-people just like you who have a driver's license and have to deal with the quirks and quibbles that go hand in hand with spending time out on America's highways. Believe it or not, many of these professionals have received speeding tickets and parking tickets and been in accidents just like you. That means they have a pretty good idea of just how easy it is to add a couple of black marks onto your driving record, and they know that a ticket or two or a single accident is probably the result of a moment of inattention rather than a career of reckless driving.

How does that benefit you? When companies acknowledge the fact that it's not as easy to keep your driving record flawless as you'd like to think it was you have the chance to continue to keep a "good" standing with your insurer rather than watching your insurance rates go through the roof. A single "oops" isn't going to kill you (especially if you looked around and found a car insurance company that offered accident forgiveness).

Every car insurance company has its own set of definitions when it comes to deciding how "good" is good enough for great insurance rates, so get on the phone to your insurance agent. You might be surprised by what you'll find out.