rant on
I hate shopping for car insurance…just got done shredding about $15 worth of letters from different companies (postage) for quotes that were worse than Geico whom were with now.
What’s the point of having them blow up my email if they’re just going to piss off my letter carrier too while they’re at it!
rant off
That pissed off letter carrier should be happy they are helping keep the USPS afloat 
Hahaha, yeah I thought about that but this is 30 letters from different insurance companies, with no less than 10 of them just from Allstate!
That makes sense considering I’ve always found Allstate to be one of, if not the, most expensive insurer for me.
Car insurance rates in CA have been increasing exponentially (well, it seems like that) for the last 5 years.
Don’t take it personally, because you are not the only one that is bitching about their rates. Was speaking with a coworker last week that was mad as hell her BMW X1 went up from $423 every six months to $600.
The fires last year burned a lot of cars…they need to recoup that cash.
They tell you it is because there are more cars on the road, leading to more accidents. I call BS on that, because if that were the case, then there would be more premiums being paid with more cars on the road.
The major reason for the rate hikes in Cali is the rise in uninsured motorists from giving the illegals a drivers licence. Consider it a wealth redistribution benefit of the system. 
High gas prices and insurance in Cali…what a great state to be fiscally raped in.
Illegal immigrants - the omnipresent boogey man but not the big issue here (maybe a small issue but even that’s uncertain, see below)
Based on talking to people who do insurance work I think the simplest reason rates are going up is cars are getting more expensive to fix. With a lot of these radar systems in the front grill, a small fender bender turns into a many thousand dollar repair that often needs to happen at an expensive dealership shop versus a Geico/Allstate preferred shop. With heads up displays and cameras looking through windshield, a replacement windshield cost muh more than it used to etc…
Another issue is that state mandated minimum insurance that the majority of motorists carry haven’t gone up much in the past 10 years. California’s minimum property damage insurance is 5k. Think about how much damage an average accident to a new car costs. 5k is probably inadequate 50% of the time. And most Americans only carrying 5k of property damage insurance pdon’t have thousands of dollars lying around to cover the deficiency judgement.
Finally, illegals aren’t as expensive as you think because, as noted above, someone carrying minimum insurance doesn’t really help much versus someone with no insurance. Also, illegal immigrants often don’t persue claims because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. My contact guessed they were about a wash in the cost of insurance game but either way they aren’t a big factor.
What happens when these people without insurance hit your car?
Your insurance covers it. It costs x dollars to cover the bills caused by auto accidents. If that x dollars is divided by the number if insured drivers, the insured drivers portion will rise to cover the difference.
The logic with the expensive safety systems being costly to repair argues against itself. Shouldn’t this safety equipment reduce accidents and protect the drivers, lowering the insurance costs?
Minimum insurance only adds on to the problem, but less so than uninsured motorists.
Another contributing factor in Cali is that the insurance companies CAN NOT use your FICO score as a gauge of your risk. There may be one other state that has this law? It also drives up rates for the fiscally responsible.
Wait, so prior to giving illegals driver licenses, they were driving insured? Crazzzeeey.
Yep, just like prior to Obamacare people without health insurance definitely didn’t go to the ER and definitely didn’t drive up the cost for MY health insurance. Do you think he is saying that an insurance mandate/everyone having insurance can lower the cost for everyone?
I’d guess that illegal immigrants would be very likely to get insurance if it was available to them. If I drive without insurance I risk arrest and maybe a little jail time. If they get pulled over without insurance and get arrested their chance of being deported goes way up. They have every motivation to get insurance to prevent the arrest which likely leads to their deportation.
As for @WGDave point about safety systems reducing accidents and lowering insurance cost, I haven’t seen any studies about the cost benefit of these systems. They reduce injuries to people but I have no idea if they prevent enough accidents to account for the cost of fixing them post accident. Moreover, some accidents are just bad luck. My father has an Outback with eyesight. A construction truck spitting out bits of rock broke his windshield. Eyesight can’t help prevent that but it made the windshield repair more expensive.
While the topic is fairly useless for any individual as the costs will vary based on whatever variables the insurance companies want to use, I’m very happy it was posted!
Never heard of Metromile until this thread, but my quote from them is much better than my current rates. $34.50 base a month plus 4.6 cents a mile. Geico currently has me at about $800 for 6 months. I drive about 6-7k per year.
Anyone been in a situation where they had to file a claim with them? If so, what was the experience like?
TIA!
Similar experience with Geico, constant increases over the last 5 years, yet nothing that should warrant an increase. If this Metro service is half decent, I’ll be making the switch.
Quite possible this thread just saved me $800-$1k a year.
To those that doubt my premise, tell me why New Mexico, the first state to give driver’s licenses to illegals in 2003, has the highest rate of uninsured drivers at 29%?
According to https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/03/15/483414.htm
New Mexico is number 4 highest, with Florida leading the pack at 26.7%. The other top contenders are Mississippi, Michigan and Tennessee. Therefore, you can easily see there is no correlation between uninsured drivers and illegals obtaining DL.
New Mexico actually fell from 29% to 20%, so perhaps it actually helps?
ok Trump we get it, you don’t like illegals.
Because NDN (Part apache here :p) don’t care about car insurance. Hard to repo cars out of the res too!
Unless they work for him. Still doesn’t like them, but tolerates due to reasons…
Let’s keep politics out of this please.
A little anecdote about illegals and driver licenses. When I was younger I had a short gig at employment agency in Brooklyn. We were placing mostly illegals and newly immigrated folks into the type of jobs they were accused of “stealing”. Quite a few drivers came across who were in the country illegally, all had valid driver licences. Apparently, there was a very primitive process for obtaining these. Load up a van full of illegals, travel down south and try one DMV or another, until they got lucky. Eventually, everyone got one.
The land of opportunity.
That is sad, now the Southern states will loose another revenue stream.