How Vehicle Type Affects Car Insurance Rate

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How Vehicle Type Affects Car Insurance Rate

26 October 2017
 Categories: Insurance, Blog

The car you drive has a big influence on your auto insurance rates. Here are the specific things about your car that may affect your rates:

The Safety Ratings of the Vehicle

A car's safety rating gives an indication of how likely it is to cause an accident, the effectiveness of its crash-protection system, and how it behaves in a rollover, among other things. Auto insurance companies use safety ratings as one of the factors in calculating coverage rates. This makes sense because a car with an awful safety rating is more likely to cause severe injuries and damages than a car with a good safety rating. This means a car with a dismal safety rating is likely to cause the insurance company more money than a car with good safety rating.

How Much Thieves Target the Vehicle

If your car is damaged, your car insurance company only pays the cost of the repair. If the car is stolen, the insurance company pays the entire value of the car. This means stolen car's cost insurance companies a lot of money.

What is more, some cars are stolen more frequently than others. This is because some of them are easy to sell, some fetch good money for the criminals, and others are difficult to track. Whatever reason makes your car a thief magnet, it will attract high insurance rates if it appears in the list of most stolen vehicles (that keep on changing).

The Price of the Vehicle

There are two main reasons why the price of a car is an important factor in rate determination. For one, an expensive car is costly to replace in case it is stolen or damaged and written off. Secondly, expensive cars are costly to repair in case of damage; this is mainly due to their costly spare parts and service costs.

Typical Drivers of the Vehicle

Lastly, the demographics of the typical drivers or owners of the car will also determine how the insurance company rates the vehicle. For example, cars that are typically owned or driven by those who crave speed, such as sports cars, may attract relatively higher rates than cars favored by family people who are known to be extra careful while driving.

Luckily, it is not just your car that determines your auto coverage rates. You don't have to change cars to enjoy reasonable rates; having a clean driving history, packing your car in a secure area, having a low annual mileage and asking for as many discounts as you can get are other ways of enjoying low coverage rates.