What You Drive Matters
Your vehicle choice plays a major role in the resulting insurance premium. For instance, you will be looking at a much higher insurance premium for a sports car or SUV.
Insurers keep track of all the claims made, along with industry-published figures to help them determine the break-even point for their policies. This includes how much it costs to repair your vehicle, along with bodily injuries suffered and the cost for medical care. The Highway Loss Data Institute provides a large variety of statistics related to each type of vehicle. Take some time and look at their data as it may help you narrow down your choice of vehicle.
As the site shows, larger vehicles, such as SUVs or trucks, have much fewer injury claims, but often much higher collision costs. The safety of a large vehicle comes at a fairly large sticker price upon purchase, along with higher insurance costs should you ever get into an accident. As many SUVs now come with AWD or 4WD, insurers will knock you again for the added costs to repair the systems. If you can barely afford such a large car, the insurance may push you over the edge.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are the small, sporty cars. Cars like these are often the smaller of the two vehicles involved in a collision, resulting in higher repair costs. Additionally, the size causes many more physical injuries to the passengers within and will once again raise the insurance premium due to the larger associated medical costs.
So now, what doesn’t eat your soul with insurance premiums? We could all drive Volvos and Saabs and have no issues with insurance costs, but alas that is not the case. Most “sensible” cars, as suggested by many publications, are good starting points for many insurance rates. The cost of your insurance will increase with each new feature you add to your car.
With the instant quotes that many insurance companies have available on their website, it is very easy to learn of the insurance premium prior to purchasing your car.
