Caricature of original Broadway cast of Evita! by Al Hirschfeld. Used momentarily.
Recently, a lot of articles in the business news have caught my eye on this tearjerker subject. Apparently, the insurers have been getting far more automobile crash claims than they expected and have been taking underwriting losses. That means that State Farm for example lost $3.5 billion dollars in 2021 because they paid out more claim dollars than they received in premiums. So, how do they fix this problem? They increase your auto insurance rates. This also comes after they had hugely profitable years during the pandemic years when miles driven were far lower and hence crashes were fewer.
So, you were a safe driver and your rates doubled or went up a lot. The reason is that State Farm screwed up their underwriting and needs to make their money back. A possible subtle finding within these results is that the more technology focused cars become, the harder and more expensive they are to repair. Extended repair times mean more rental car costs and more customers becoming annoyed and switching carriers and more expense as the auto body shops are no longer a guy with a wrench. If you are driving a Tesla Model Y and you waited 7 months to take ownership of the car and it has 1000 sensors and you hit a concrete post, it is no longer a question of banging out the dent. Now you need new sensors, a new sensor pad, and a whole bunch of other calibration. So, what was a $3,000 repair is now a $13,000 repair.
The moral of the story is that insurance is a necessary evil. I have been working on a crash that occurred in my own family and I had to sit down and figure out exactly what our policy covered and did not and it took a bit to do that and I know this stuff inside and out. But, the Tesla example is a real headache for me, the insurer, and will only get worse over time. SO, your rates will keep going up for reasons having nothing to do with you. SO, shop around and change carriers often.