this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Car insurance rates are surging as Americans struggle to pay for basic necessities and ongoing debt.

The newest Consumer Price Index shows car insurance spiked 20 percent year over year. The surge in pricing occurred after years of gradual price inflation, with earlier reports finding the rates grew by 36 percent since 2020.

That's at the same time debt is soaring for many Americans. While Americans hold around 1.75 trillion in student debt loans alone, they also have $1.05 trillion in credit card balances not paid off.

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[–] cybersandwich@lemmy.world 47 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The price of cars is through the roof. It makes sense that insurance would go up to cover it.

When a new car is double what it was 10-15 years ago, our insurancehas to go up.

The issue here is stagnate wages.

[–] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 27 points 8 months ago (5 children)

And also insurance companies charging just as much as they can get away with.

The US system is designed to squeeze every last penny out of a person, to the point they can still "survive," but not so much that they become destitute and can no longer buy things and pay for essential services.

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 30 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)
  • People insist on driving larger cars, creating more severe accidents.
  • People insist on driving more expensive cars, driving up replacement and repair costs.
  • People insist on outlawing speed cameras and red light cameras, driving up accident rates and severity.
  • People insist on increasing speed limits, increasing accident rates and severity.
  • Roads and merge lanes are poorly designed as governments cut corners. Again, this increases accident rates and severity.
  • States don’t test drivers regularly for competence. This means impaired drivers and poorly skilled drivers remain on the road, causing accidents.
  • Urban police forces no longer enforce traffic laws in many cities, increasing accident rates.
  • Some states are getting rid of car inspections. Which means more cars with bad tires and no headlights and more accidents.

Add inflation and greedflation, and It’s no wonder insurance rates are higher.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 75 points 8 months ago (1 children)

People insist on outlawing speed cameras and red light cameras, driving up accident rates and severity.

I can't speak for your state, but red light cameras started being a great source of revenue from fines, so people started rigidly adhering to them. So this caused two problems.

  1. While there were less T-bone accidents meaning people running red lights and hitting perpendicular traffic, all other types of accidents increased by 18% because people were hard stopping so as not to get fined and getting rear ended. source. So if your point is lower costs because of fewer accidents, Red light cameras increased accidents.

  2. Because people were not running lights anymore, the fines from red light cameras went down. The money was so good that cities got greedy, they started randomly decreasing yellow light times to cause more people to run red lights to increase fines again video source

[–] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago

Also in my area people started shooting out the redlight cameras cause they were fining people who were following the law to a T. The cops were outright working with the city maintenance guys to cut the wire on the damned things because they were getting pissed having to deal with the complaints.

[–] hddsx@lemmy.ca 33 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Red light cameras cause accidents because people slam on their brakes too hard.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Or, someone's following distance is too short.

[–] hddsx@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, but defense driving dictates that you should be aware of the tailgating asshole behind you

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 3 points 8 months ago

... and not be speeding in the first place.

None of this is the fault of any enforcement action, it's the fault of poor driving.

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[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Some of these are valid. But speed cameras do fuck all for safety. They are a private company scam to take money from people

[–] RGB3x3@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago

The better way to go about it is to redesign roadways to force people to slow down. Narrower lanes, trees on each side, no more 6-lane highways through semi-residential and mixed-use areas. And then invest in public transportation so that fewer people even need to drive their own cars.

But I'm preaching to the choir on Lemmy and hoping for hell to freeze over.

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

Thanks for pointing that out.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

People insist on driving more expensive cars, driving up replacement and repair costs.

It's not like the average US consumer has a say in this. The cheapest car you can drive off a lot is like 25k now. We could have less expensive cars but for half a century we've used tariffs to provide an unfair competitive advantage to our domestic motor companies who only took advantage of it to price gouge.

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[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 9 points 8 months ago

Another factor (in the US at least) is over-litigation of any and all traffic incidents. Seems like the default practice now is to get lawyers involved for a fender bender that breaks one tail light. The "at fault" drivers insurance ends up using lawyers to go back and forth haggling with the "victim" drivers lawyers and they finally settle on some ridiculous payment that is 10x what the actual damage was. All that cost gets passed on to everybody who buys car insurance.

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Speed limits dont decrease acidents. They are the most famous example of a safety feature not working

[–] tissek@sopuli.xyz 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If the road is made for 90km/h, wide and with good sight lines, reducing legal speed to 70km/h doesn't do much. There also needs to be made adjustments to the road so you cannot drive faster than 70km/h. Well so you aren't natirally incentiviced to drive faster than you should.

[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Once the state of Montana had no speed limits out side ot towns. When they added speed limits there was no change to traffic accidents or deaths.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

We have a lot of roads in the US now with speed limits closer to 105-115km/h. When you get up to this range your vehicles start dropping fuel efficiency too due to loss from wind drag.

[–] FenrirIII@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

This list is true and depressing. People in this country should not be running it. It's a daycare run by children.

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[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 20 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Could be related. Low credit scores can lead to higher insurance prices. But that doesn't seem right because the actual risk shouldn't have likely changed. Could be higher repair costs. Of course simple corporate greed could be to blame. Didn't need to actually say that one did I?

My car insurance went up $1200 this year, which blows my mind. No reason given.

[–] 52fighters@sopuli.xyz 9 points 8 months ago

Used car prices went up, new car prices went up, collision repair prices went up, and repair time increased significantly. We also saw a huge increase in accident severity and a growing trend toward more aggressive driving.

[–] MicroWave@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The article lists several factors:

Because car prices in general have skyrocketed, more Americans are keeping their current cars for longer. This means costly repairs can become more likely, and the car insurers have adjusted their rates accordingly.

In the last year, car repair prices also climbed 7 percent, outpacing inflation by more than double.

A supply chain slowdown and ongoing labor shortages have also pushed the insurance industry to implement price hikes on customers, insuranceQuotes.com analyst Michael Giusti said.

"None of that even mentions the higher medical costs they have to pay after accidents," Giusti said. "Today's higher premiums are just a reflection of those higher costs."

The sudden rise of electric vehicle purchases also carried some of the blame, since EVs are more expensive to purchase and repair, Henn said.

[–] 0110010001100010@lemmy.world 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Because car prices in general have skyrocketed, more Americans are keeping their current cars for longer. This means costly repairs can become more likely, and the car insurers have adjusted their rates accordingly.

This makes zero sense as insurance doesn't cover vehicle maintenance/repairs.

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[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 4 points 8 months ago

I don't understand how more costly repairs translate to higher insurance premiums. The insurance companies aren't paying to replace your engine.

Also their $2500 average yearly premium is insane. I'm in my 30s with two cars and two drivers insured, including comprehensive and the highest coverage progressive offers, and a 100 mile round trip commute, and it's only $1400 a year.

[–] seathru@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

My car insurance went up $1200 this year, which blows my mind. No reason given.

Kind of like jobs. If you stay with the same company for more than a couple years, you're probably doing yourself a disservice.

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

My car insurance went up $1200 this year, which blows my mind. No reason given.

Damn, what the hell. I pay about 15% of that for comprehensive coverage here in Germany. I guess that evens it out with the cheap fuel that you guys have.

[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I live in a no-fault state, which I love, but our insurance rates here are among the highest in the nation.

No fault insurance just means my insurance pays me, not whomever I get into an accident with. I do business with a company I trust to take care of me, so I don't have to care if I'm in an accident with someone with shit insurance.

Not everyone here is a fan due to high prices, but I like it. I've seen too many friends in other states get low-ball offers that they either had to accept or be without a car for weeks while they appeal.

Ironically, it wouldn't matter because the only accidents I've been involved in were with deer (who are notorious for carrying no insurance) so I've never been in an accident where no fault actually helped me.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I live in a no-fault state, which I love, but our insurance rates here are among the highest in the nation.

My experience living in a "no-fault" state was that someone rear-ended my wife who was stopped at a red light but insurance wouldn't do jack because it was a "no-fault" accident. We paid higher for liability there than anywhere else we lived. Not a fan.

[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

What is supposed to happen there is you get your car fixed by your insurance and if the other driver is liable your insurance collects your deductible from them to pay you back. I don't believe they are allowed to just say they won't fix it, but if the other driver isn't determined to be at fault on the accident report, the deductible is yours to pay which often means small accidents aren't worth the claim.

[–] HurlingDurling@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Geico gave me a reason, "The reason why we are increasing your rate is because there are more people in your area who drive without insurance"

I'm sorry, but how the fuck is that my problem? Also, isn't that the whole fucking point of the full cover insurance I am required to pay while I'm making payments on the car?

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

I’m sorry, but how the fuck is that my problem? Also, isn’t that the whole fucking point of the full cover insurance I am required to pay while I’m making payments on the car?

Insurance always wins. If you have full coverage they have to pay when you get hit by them. They don't want to pay.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What car do you have? Is it a Kia or Hyundai?

[–] MagicShel@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

Chevy Volt and a Town & Country.

[–] aeharding@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Imagine buying a new car in 2024

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