New Safety Gizmos Are Making Car Insurance More Expensive 144
Strudelkugel shares a report from Wired: American car insurance rates are going up up up. In the past decade, they climbed 29.6 percent, to an average of $1,548 in 2019 from $1,194 in 2011. The surge, detailed in a new report from insurance shopping site The Zebra, outpaced both inflation (by far) and the increase in average car prices (more narrowly). And it came even as the rate of crashes has fallen year over year. [...] It turns out that new features designed to keep vehicles in their lanes and out of trouble are contributing to rising insurance rates.
That's because the sensors that power those systems make cars much more expensive to fix when they do crash. Dent a steel bumper, and a few hammer blows gets you back on the road. Smash one on a new car, and it could mean replacing a radar, a camera, and ultrasonic sensors, then calibrating them so they work properly. Replacing a cracked windshield now comes with the extra cost of having someone readjust any cameras that look through the glass. While some studies have shown the effectiveness of emergency braking, insurance companies haven't yet seen enough evidence to justify a break in rates for most of these features. That's not to say lane keeping, parking assist, and the rest don't work. They're all relatively new, and the actuaries aren't yet confident that their benefits outweigh the extra costs they incur to repair. Complicating the picture is the fact that each automaker offers its own version of each feature, and that drivers may not keep the systems engaged. "The cost of crash repairs has risen about 5 to 6 percent each year since 2015," the report adds. "In the same span, the frequency of crashes has dropped by just about 2 to 3 percent."
That's because the sensors that power those systems make cars much more expensive to fix when they do crash. Dent a steel bumper, and a few hammer blows gets you back on the road. Smash one on a new car, and it could mean replacing a radar, a camera, and ultrasonic sensors, then calibrating them so they work properly. Replacing a cracked windshield now comes with the extra cost of having someone readjust any cameras that look through the glass. While some studies have shown the effectiveness of emergency braking, insurance companies haven't yet seen enough evidence to justify a break in rates for most of these features. That's not to say lane keeping, parking assist, and the rest don't work. They're all relatively new, and the actuaries aren't yet confident that their benefits outweigh the extra costs they incur to repair. Complicating the picture is the fact that each automaker offers its own version of each feature, and that drivers may not keep the systems engaged. "The cost of crash repairs has risen about 5 to 6 percent each year since 2015," the report adds. "In the same span, the frequency of crashes has dropped by just about 2 to 3 percent."
It woyod seem... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dent a steel bumper, and a few hammer blows gets you back on the road
It would seem that someone knows rather little about body repair...
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Hey, Bondo works too!
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Re: It woyod seem... (Score:3)
Most front bumpers are aluminum now while rear bumpers are mostly steel
Most bumper supports are steel now while the bumper covers are plastic.
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Re:It woyod seem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Long ago cars were not the high precision, sleek and shiny objects they are today. Most cars had basic matte paint, simple body panels and were assembled by hand so no two were quite the same. Panel gaps were expected, paint was rarely perfect unless you bought a luxury brand, and even then...
So back then you could fix a lot of issues with panel beating, or simply tolerate them because everyone's car was a bit imperfect, dented or rusting away.
Nowadays people are anal about their cars and expect perfection. People reject new cars because of orange peel effect on the paint or tiny imperfections in the glass. So the standard of repairs has to be a lot higher.
Parts are also more expensive. Modern paint costs more, and many manufacturers operate on a just-in-time delivery system now so parts have to be ordered and often imported, meaning repair times get longer so there are higher rental fees to cover. With EVs the lack of EV rentals often means fuel costs added in too.
Re:It woyod seem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dent a steel bumper, and a few hammer blows gets you back on the road
It would seem that someone knows rather little about body repair...
A steel bumper is referring to a specific era of car manufacturing, and it's more accurate than you assume.
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IIRC, hammering the dents out of a steel bumper would often cause the chrome to peel off.
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A friend of mine got rear-ended at modest speed while driving his 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser, basically a classic Jeep like vehicle. It has spring steel flattened hoops as bumpers. He rubbed the worst of the other guy's paint off the bumper and could find no other damage to the Land Cruiser. The other car had a smashed grill, crumpled hood, and so on. Basically it was $0 of damage compared to several thousand.
Cars no longer had functional bumpers, and a 5 mph collision can be thousands of dollars of damag
Re:It woyod seem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Curious actuarial result (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Curious actuarial result (Score:5, Interesting)
So these safety features can be making cars safer (reducing the accident rate), while simultaneously driving up auto insurance rates. They could be trading off increased repair costs in exchange for reduced hospitalization costs. Now, if auto+health insurance rates are rising in response to the introduction of these safety features, then something funny is going on.
Re:Curious actuarial result (Score:5, Interesting)
If you live in an area where lots of people have expensive cars your insurance rates will go up because of the greater risk of you being liable for an expensive repair. Merely owning a cheaper, simpler car is not going to protect you from that.
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I don't know why you're running off into the weeds on this If it costs most to repair, it costs more to insure. It's right there in the summar
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I don't know why you're running off into the weeds on this If it costs most to repair, it costs more to insure.
But if the safety feature reduces the number of accidents, leading to fewer repairs, the total cost goes down, so the insurance rates would eventually go down. That is what happened with anti-lock breaks - insurance companies offered a discount for having them, since they prevented accidents.
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Both health and auto insurance have been rising faster than inflation for years.
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If I may ask, shat "reduced hospitalization costs"? Hospital costs have similarly risen outrageously, in many cases for similar reasons. More extreme and in many cases pointless procedures and tests are often padding hospital bills. While Adam Conover is hardly a scientific reference, the "Adam Ruins Everything" show actually did a video about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
There is a much more detailed NIH analys at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
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The Adam Ruins Everything show, including this clip, has been debunked by real doctors, researchers etc.
Healthcare costs are going down, what is going up is the rates that private insurances have to cover because Medicare doesn't cover them. On average, hospitals Medicare reimbursements cover 70% of the actual cost of procedures, those that dip below that are typically systems that go bankrupt (eg. rural areas that have less private insurance coverage), which means that private insurance have to pick up 130
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Not so much debunked but denied without evidence. Medicare doesn't even figure in until you're 65.
Big surprise, the people that want MORE MORE MORE MORE money complain that Medicare doesn't give them MORE money.
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Why would they lower prices? (Score:5, Insightful)
The insurance companies have no motivation to lower prices sooner than necessary. The car companies may quote safety ratings and stats but that does not matter to the insurance companies.
Re:Why would they lower prices? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why would they lower prices? (Score:4, Insightful)
Next you'll be claiming some government commission has to approve all insurance products sold and who can sell them and for how much...
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Re:Why would they lower prices? (Score:4, Informative)
You've really never heard of State Insurance Commissions [rmiia.org]?
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Re:Why would they lower prices? (Score:5, Informative)
Insurance companies do have motivation to lower prices as soon as possible exactly because there is tremendous competition in the industry. I have over 20 years in the industry in roles ranging from IT, new product development, innovation, data management, strategy, and distribution. We are constantly trying to figure out how to charge less while still making a modest profit.
First, I'll tell you that most P&C (property and casualty - as opposed to say life and health insurance) companies target a 96% combined ratio on auto insurance. That means we pay out $.96 in claims and expenses for every $1.00 we take in. That's a margin of about $.04 per dollar. Contrast that with Microsoft who turned 31.2% in 2019 - over eight times the margin. Yes, we do make some money on investments, but we are required (both by rating agencies and good conscience) to invest in "safe" assets like municipal bonds, treasuries, etc. Right now, those investments barely cover inflation. I should also note that 96 is the target. For what it's worth, 2018 was the first time the industry combined ratio on auto insurance fell below 100 (over 100 means you are paying out more than you are taking in) since 2008. That's right, the industry lost money (though not much) for 10 straight years on auto insurance.
Second, auto insurance customers are quite sensitive to price. We are constantly doing what we can to reduce rates where possible. Claims are our biggest outflow of cash, but it's hard to cut there without negatively impacting customers. Profit margins are small so there isn't much room there either. That leaves expenses. Our company has put tremendous pressure on expenses over the last several years (layoffs, software and other contract re-negotiations, office consolidation, benefits changes, process engineering, automation, etc.). It has resulted in a drop in our expense ratio that was immediately factored into our rating plans - reducing or freezing (no increase for inflation) rates in many states. States that didn't see changes are states that were experiencing elevated loss costs and which were already unprofitable.
Third, insurance companies are heavily regulated. We can reduce prices, but we still have to prove (usually via extensive actuarial exhibits) that we can offer our rates without entering a period of consistent, significant underwriting losses. Why? Well, because companies that consistently lose money go out of business and then they can't pay claims. The state departments of insurance don't want that. A company can't just hop into the market and undercut everyone's rates - unless they can prove they have lower claims costs or expense ratios than the rest of the market. For what it's worth, Progressive tends to have the lowest expense ratio in the industry and it shows, overall, in their rates. They also have some of the most advanced segmentation and predictive analytics so their overall low rates might not mean low for each individual (for those folk that want to say "Progressive was 1.5x my current rate so you must be wrong.").
Fourth, I can tell you that we are excited about these safety developments. We really do expect them to result in lower loss costs and lower rates - eventually. The problem is multi-faceted at this point.
1. Accident rates and severity are increasing. People are driving more miles and having more accidents per mile. Traffic fatalities have been trending up for the first time in recent history. We suspect things such as distracted driving play a significant role in this. Still, nobody knows the exact cause nor does there appear to be a magic bullet to address it quickly.
2. Our stance is that this will change as we reach a certain threshold of new, safety feature equipped vehicles on the road. We just aren't there yet. Your blind spot monitors are great for keeping you from making a mistake, but they don't stop the person without the monitors from hitting you. There are still more "simple" cars on the road than there are cars with the ful
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As a business if your costs go up, you either take less profit or raise prices. As a publicly traded company as most of these companies are, taking less profit is essentially forbidden. The crux of the issue is what were cheaper parts are now much more expensive. The insurance companies certainly will not eat that difference which means the consumer has to do so.
Anecdotally one of my friends had a cracked windshield due to road hazard. A rock chipped the windshield and it spread into a crack. This was a new
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Which is why Tesla is selling their own insurance now at their own rates. They have the collision data, they know how much the sensors help.
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There is some of that, but there is also a repairability problem and the terrible markup on replacement parts. Also a durability problem.
For example, backing an SUV into a pole in a parking lot at 5 MPH should NOT shatter the back window and do $2000 worth of damage. That's a design problem. Before someone brings it up, yes, crumple zones are great for a 45 MPH collision, the problem is when they crumple at under 10MPH. Bumping the bumper should not require replacing hundreds of dollars worth of sensors and
It's all a racket now . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
We bought a new car a couple of years ago with all of the safety bells and whistles, and a rock hit our windshield while we were on a trip which caused a crack to spread across the window. There are literally tons of window repair shops in our town, but we had to make an appointment out of town and waste a day because there are sensors that needed to be calibrated behind thew new windshield. It required special equipment to install a a piece of glass. Meanwhile, I had an old truck that I had to replace the passenger side mirror a couple of times, and each time it was $20 off of eBay. Now, it can cost $1,000 to replace a side mirror because of the sensors and sometimes a camera. Good luck 15 years from now finding a cheap knockoff replacement mirror for today's new cars. It will never happen. The auto industry is just doing what so many electronics makers have been doing for years: making it too expensive to repair.
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Yeah, this crap is ridiculous and shows the problem with these newer, over-priced cars. For folks who don;t put a lot of miles on a car, it makes leasing a LOT more pallettable when you are getting a new car every two years and don't have to deal with aging parts and repairs....
Re:It's all a racket now . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
To illustrate the pricing issue: the other day I had to replace a hydraulic line in the folding roof of my Volvo. The dealer quoted €500 for a replacement line (they are sold as a set of 2), and he admitted it was a huge ripoff. According to him, that part almost never breaks and there’s no aftermarket as a result, so Volvo sets up to 1000% margin on such parts. Luckily I was able to get a replacement at a scrap yard for €10...
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Here in the US, the scrap dealers know what the dealer charges and will quote you 10% under that
Depends on the scrap yard. there are 2 near me that will sell the parts at twice the scrap value - but they are "self service" yards. You have to find the parts you need and remove from the car/machine/whatever yourself. And don't forget to bring your own tools - and maybe your own helper.
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You make it sound like this is a scheme by the car companies but I don't think that's true. Consumer demand led to all these electronic bells and whistles.
People who make wise financial decisions don't buy new cars unless their disposable income is so high that a car is not viewed as a major investment. People who fix their own mirrors (like me) consider a "new" car to be something that is a couple years old with 30,000 miles on it. Buying new cars is for suckers and suckers are impressed by all sorts of si
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You make it sound like this is a scheme by the car companies but I don't think that's true.
Even if it's not at all an intended side effect (which I don't really believe), they certainly aren't complaining. Vendor lock-in is something that pretty much every company actively works towards, even if they don't admit it openly. Somebody at GM absolutely got a bonus if the only source for a replacement side-mirror (or door handle, or rear-view mirror, etc) for a GM vehicle is GM itself. Even if non-OEM parts eventually appear on the market, if they can get 2-3 years as the only supplier, that means
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Consumer demand lead to the bells and whistles, but they didn't HAVE to be so damned fragile and they didn't have to use special snowflake parts when there are so many COTS options out there.
But yeah, brand new cars are for suckers. Half the value gone as soon as the front wheels touch public pavement (except magically, not when being test driven).
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Not saying you personally/specifically had the chance to do this, but in general don't ignore window chip. Get them chip-fixed as soon as you can, or they will spread out and require replacement. I used to ignore them and had to get 2-3 replacements because "Oh, it's sort of free through insurance". But it takes time, hassle, and get enough and they aren't 'free'.
I bought a cheap kit off Amazon and fixed my most recent one, took just a few minutes and I can't even see where it was now.
Greed pure and simple (Score:3)
I live in Europe and I pay 12€ a month, unlimited corporal damage and 10 million other damage.
I get 60% reduction because I haven't had a accident in 30 years but even without that it would be around 25€.
And there are a lot more expensive cars around here.
Re:Greed pure and simple (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, you are talking about liability only insurance. That is about $35 a month in the US. That isn't what we are talking about.
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"Yes, you are talking about liability only insurance. That is about $35 a month in the US. That isn't what we are talking about."
So the article says that a Ferrari/Bugatti pays more than a Subaru for such an insurance?
Expensive cars have to pay more when you are to stupid to enter your own garage?
And that's news?
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If my experiences in Europe have taught me anything, it's that Europeans are more willing to put up with cosemetic damage than Americans. Especially the Italians, who act like every roadway is a racetrack. Many Americans will get a slight scratch on their car and instead of using a little bit of touch up paint they immediately call the insurance company and get it sent to the body shop. Then to fix a small scratch on the bumper not only does the entire bumper need to be painted, but the body pannels it bord
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Don't lump Europe together. Though the GP did the same. I pay 45EUR a month for insurance on a pretty basic car.
Just excuses for increases (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't win this game. You can try to choose not to play, but that only works in some cases in some areas. Most of us have only an illusion of choice on this matter.
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but they eventually become part of the main party (by choice or force; or they go out of business)
(Emphasis mine)
If offering lower rates forces you out of business, it implies that the higher rates are not artificially inflated by greed. Apparently, those are the rates an insurance company needs to charge to stay afloat.
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but they eventually become part of the main party (by choice or force; or they go out of business)
If offering lower rates forces you out of business, it implies that the higher rates are not artificially inflated by greed. Apparently, those are the rates an insurance company needs to charge to stay afloat.
That is not an unreasonable hypothesis though I am not aware of an insurance company that went out of business due to their rates being too low. All of the discount companies I can think of have been purchased by larger companies and their rates went up as a result.
Now why would the larger companies want to buy these companies if they are not profitable? After all, if they are losing money they could just let them collapse and pick up the customers as a result after the fact. The more logical conclu
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insurance companies don't really want other insurance companies to go out of business because then when the solvent company (A)'s driver gets hit by the limping company's (B) driver and B doesn't pay out, A gets to cover it even though they're not getting the premiums, which hurts A's bottom line.
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It doesn't necessarily mean that the lower rate isn't sustainable for an established insurance company. All it really indicates is that it isn't sustainable for a new insurance company (due to start up costs). If they do make it to the point of profitability then the larger insurance companies may come in and buy them out (to preserve the higher rates).
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And if you don't own a vehicle, you don't have to directly pay for vehicle insurance. Of course vehicle insurance costs are built into your Amazon or Instacart deliveries.
Re: Just excuses for increases (Score:2)
Of course vehicle insurance costs are built into your Amazon or Instacart deliveries.
And I'd argue that they're built into the 'quality of life' - i.e. utter lack thereof - of Amazon and Instacart drivers.
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All states require at least liability insurance of some kind. You can clobber yourself without insurance, but you can't clobber someone else.
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No, they don't. They require proof of financial responsibility. You can put money (or a bond) on deposit with the DMV to cover that. Most people buy insurance to provide it, but insurance itself is not required.
Re: Just excuses for increases (Score:2)
Actually they don't require a bond. New Hampshire has the I will self pay option. I know a lady with it who lost her license until such a time she can pay the self pay option. On a car accident. Generally self pay goes to 2 people. Those rich enough to have 20k in cash on hand and those too poor to have the $50-100 a month for car insurance
The self pay option is stupid. I hit a deer in New Hampshire and did 10,000 dollars in damage to my 2016 Jeep renegade. I narrowly avoided it being totaled.
Without
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No shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Who would have thought cramming more crap into vehicles because people are too incompetent to drive safely would make things more expensive? It's almost as if when something gets more complicated to make it becomes more expensive to fix.
But hey, it's only money. Who cares if you're wasting $1,500 every year for no reason. It's not like you could use that money for anything useful.
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So.... surely the insurance company charges people based on the car that is being insured and as well as the driver's record.... right?
If I own an old easy-to-fix car, I shouldn't have to pay extra for other people's hard-to-fix car.... right?
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Correct. Your insurance should be based on your previous snark: what you drive and your record. If you have an older car and you have no accidents, you should be paying almost nothing for insurance (You shouldn't be forced to pay at all, but that's a different story). Obviously you're not out running into (or over) people so why should you be penalized for some guy stiff-armed driving his 2018
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Incorrect. You should have to pay more based on the percent of hard-to-fix cars in your area, weighted by how likely you are to damage one of them with your easy-to-fix car. That's how insurance works. It's pooled risk. You don't exist in a vacuum.
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Absolutely. They charge you less than they would charge someone with a Lamborghini who lived at your address. But they also charge based on where you live and how expensive the average car in the area is because yours is not the only vehicle involved in your accident.
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Cars are getting more crap crammed into them because the auto industry can make money off of it. If it was just about bad driving I think you would see more than just a 2-3% drop in accidents with the added electronics (of course maybe the electronics just suck).
It is at the point where you don't have any choice for these electronics. They aren't optional add-ons they are standard equipment whether you want them or not. I am just about due for a new car and would really like to get one without some of these
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Yes, but you old farts will die soon and then nobody will be left to whine about how back in their day they "din't not have no fancy gizmos on their old Chrysler, by gum!".
Seriously, listening to old farts on Slashdot whine about technological advancement is a trip. I'm in my mid 40's but I'm not an old geezer like many posting in this thread.
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Listening to young whipper-snappers accept all the invasive technology without thinking of the cost or inconvenience is also a trip. 8^)
I'm not against new tech. I would just like to have an option whether I want the cost added to my purchase. If I could get the backup camera without the lane departure that would be nice. Living in a country with 4-6 months of snow covered roads means that lane departure is useless for a significant portion of the year anyway. I am also competent enough to park my own car s
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Derp. You must have missed the part about fewer accidents and of less severity. So all that 'crap' works. You are free to go buy a used 1998 Honda Civic if you want, though...
Really, what a stupid post even by Slashdot standards. Incompetent people will drive anyway, and the price of all that tech/equipment will go down. So you're paying a few extra bucks a year (not $1500) on insurance because you and everyone else on the road is safer.
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Who would have thought cramming more crap
You can always not drive. On the flip side the rest of us would be happy for someone with your attitude to be forced to actually have safety systems.
Not just the sensors (Score:3)
Automotive construction techniques have changed, and continue to change, resulting in safer and/or more fuel efficient vehicles. The downside: the same new materials and new design techniques that improve passenger safety and fuel economy are much more expensive to repair. Safety example: the ladder structures and cushioning shocks inside modern bumper skirts, by design, have to be replaced after any collision over 4 mph. The shocks are one-use only, and the ladders are designed to crumple. By doing so, they protect the passengers from most or all of the energy from lower-speed collisions.
Self driving (Score:2)
Bullshit reporting (Score:2)
A simple inflation calculator adjustment shows that $1194 is 1357 in 2019 adjusted dollars. So that immediately eliminates $150 of the $350 increase. Thats a 14% increase in premiums in an 8 year span. Health insurance, on the other hand increases by more than 14% year after year, for the same policy, often only offset by moving to a shittier plan with lower payouts.
It also does not account for the average purchase price of the cars insured. In 2011 we were still reeling from record unemployment rates and a
No more high tech cars for me! (Score:2)
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I thought that too until the new car we got came with all that standard, and there was no "not without all the tech please" option. I'm now a quickly converted believer.
I always used to put snow tires on every year, but now there's no need to. Traction control, ABS, and differential braking makes this car drive better on all season tires than the old model we had with snow tires on it. Adaptive cruise was scary as fuck the first few times, but once I was able to start trusting it, it makes rush hour traffic
Suuuure (Score:2, Insightful)
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Your neighbor's car has safety features? High premiums because if you hit him it'll be expensive no matter what you're driving!
And those gizmos suck, I never use them (Score:3)
So my 2016 Honda Pilot comes with this emergency brake system and automatic lane control. What horrible features. Let me tell you that I never tailgate, and when I am cruising, my left foot is always covering the brake pedal just in case. So the damned emergency system using to be flashing "BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE, NOW" at least five times a day, often with no one in front of my car, or lead car still far ahead. This was annoying, but after a year, the emergency BRAKE system simply went into some kind of limp mode and stopped working, taking down engine's cylinder deactivation feature, which I do want because it saves fuel. So I took the car to dealer, they did diagnostics and said there was nothing wrong with the emergency brake system and reset it. Three months later, the same problem came out, but this time the dealer reset it and said they won't do any diagnostics because the SUV is out of warranty. At this point, I decided to turn off this damn "safety feature". Thankfully you can just deactivate it. Then half a year later a stone hit my windshield, and it indeed started cracking. At this point, I did find out that replacing the windshield alone is 500 bucks. But doing it with the calibration of the damned "safety" system is 750 dollars. So indeed, this article is right. I had the windshield fixed with the calibration just for the resale value.
The lane departure system and adaptive cruise control are also truly idiotic systems. No, I don't want my steering wheel to vibrate and make turns. YES, I know I just went over the white line. I just did it myself.
These more annoying than it's worth it. When you shop for a new vehicle, make sure there is an easy way to turn off all this crap. It's fare safe to keep both your hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road.
Re: And those gizmos suck, I never use them (Score:2)
My Model 3 vs my sports car (Score:3, Interesting)
Some clown backed into my Model 3 in a parking lot. $4k repairs for some paint and light body damage on one panel. Wtf?
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The same reason it costs $400 to get Apple to replace a failed drive. They know the owners are stupid and have money to waste.
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A $100k sports car is not low end. A BRZ starts at $28,8.
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too expensive all over (Score:3)
insurance? what about the cost of cars in general?
buy a car, compared to 10 years ago, the price has increased ridicilously.
go on maintenance and pay through your nose again, much more expensive compared to 10 years ago.
cost of general repairs for small accidents going through the roof.
insurance, increased, etc.
in the past you were able to repair this all by yourself, if you were somewhat handy enough.
i bought my first car 20 years ago, and i bought a book on maintenance specific for that model and you could do everything, the only special tools you required where the usual wrench, etc.
forget about all that now, if you don't have specific software to interact with the car, you hardly can do anything.
what car companies actually want is to lease (rent) you cars, you are not supposed to really own a car anymore in the traditional sense.
Kia K900 (Score:3)
Complexity vs. Safety vs. Insurance Rates (Score:5, Interesting)
My dad was a car-body repair man.
There was a time, 1970's and before, that body repair was based on "body-on-frame" design. After an accident you could replace the body parts after bending the frame back to spec.
It took a good crash to total a car, replacing some panels and straighening the frame isn't that complicated (shaping panels is a skill for sure, one time my dad fused the front and back of two different same model cars together at the frame).
Then '80s rolled around, and Uni-Body took over. It's safer (crumple zones). But bend that frame and the vehicle is likely to be considered totalled.
This choked auto body repair shops, insurance would just total out cars. Many were not repairable to a safe-driving condition.
Insurance companies raised rates.
Now we have vehicles with sensors everywhere. Upon impact they break, need replacement, calibration, and such.
Insurance companies are raising rates.
It's obviously a complexity situation. But both uni-body design and the sensors improve safety (uni-body certainly).
But there is increased complexity, so any repair work is more expensive.
This is not surprising at all. Complexity.
Interesting Wikipedia article about vehicle frames:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Cost-benefit analysis? (Score:2)
Serious question: Does anyone know if the government does any sort of realistic cost-benefit analysis, before requiring some new gizmo or feature?
It seems to me that the bureaucracy should take a cold-blooded look at the situation. A human life has a value of $X, and L lives will be saved per year. Gizmo costs $Y and will be installed on C cars per year. It must then be the case that X*L > Y*C
Somehow, I doubt that this happens, but I would be pleased to find out that it does.
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Cars are now becoming to heavy and too complicated to effectively hit their MPG targets.
Is there a prize for being really wrong?
Cars are doing fine hitting their MPG targets. That's because cars are not becoming too heavy. They're not going up in weight much at all.
Why?
Because something like 90% of people in the US aren't driving cars. They're driving light trucks, AKA SUVs and crossovers. Those are definitely getting massive, and are struggling with the light truck MPG requirements. The problem isn't the technology, it's that everyone wants to drive a fucking monster truck, and we're not char
I even worry about normal repairs (Score:2)
I worry about even basic repairs to non-safety systems resulting in accidental fuckups in the thousands of feet of sensor wiring or complex calibration procedures not being done.
My car right now is in the body shop for a relatively minor problem (dented rear hatch from the garage door hitting it) and they told me the work would potentially impact the backup camera and that there was a whole calibration process for that.
It's also astonishing how expensive this is, this dent is about the size of a softball in
Dead on. (Score:2)
But it goes back further. Around '98, my '89 minivan had a belt break, and my passenger window fell down. $160, and the mechanice pulled the inside panel and replace the belt. Around 10 years ago, my '03 minivan (both were Grand Voyagers) same thing... except this time, the mechanic charged twice the price. As he put it, "Sure, we both know the motor's fine, and it's just the belt, but Chrysler made it a sealed unit, so we have to replace the whole thing."
It's called "improved revenue stream" for the auto c
Article should include injury and death rates (Score:2)
We buy safety gizmos to protect the PEOPLE in the car, not the car itself.
As such, it should not be surprising that the car insurance rates go up, even though crashes go down.
We end up spending more cash, but attain a lower injury and death rate as the true 'profit'.
Driver education/training reforms will fix this (Score:2)
Breaking news! (Score:2)
High-tech costs more then low-tech -- film in HD at 11.
Hit and Runs still major issue (Score:2)
My car has three times required bodywork - all three due to being hit while parked. Two of those times were hit and runs - only once, when I was sitting in the car, was the culprit identified. No amount of lane-keeping / crash avoidance is going to help here, and the cost of replacing that tech will only escalate.
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"Inflation is a lie. The cost of necessities has sky rocketed"
Yeah
That's called inflation
No it's not (Score:2)
The result is that housing, healthcare, education, insurance... all the big ticket items are going up way faster than the official inflation stats and _way_ faster than wages, meaning people's standard of living is going down.
It's like that Iraqi information minister telling everybody everything is fine while the US
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago inflation was quite high, but government policy makers were looking for an excuse to "boost the economy", so they re-defined inflation such that the number was lower. This allowed them to use policy to lower interest rates, and encourage more people to go into debt to buy more stuff. Unfortunately this all backfired in 2008 and everything melted down.
Related to your point though, the way they modified the inflation rate was to exclude a bunch of categories from it. Notably the categories that have the highest increases every year. In many places things like energy aren't included. nor are taxes and government fees. Insurance is often omitted as well. The consumer price index also famously includes a set "basket of goods" which is unchanged for decades, even if you can't physically buy the items in it anymore (for example, if the basket includes a 13" CRT TV, but those just aren't sold anymore and the cheapest thing you can find now is a 40" LCD, they will claim that because what you got is more valuable than what's in the basket, only a portion of the purchase price counts, despite you not being able to buy the cheaper option). This keeps that consumer price index artificially low.
Governments love to see inflation in the 2% range, and the consumer price index tracking it closely. If they don't match, the government has 2 choices:
- use regulatory tools to encourage a change in those numbers (very hard, and not guaranteed to actually work)
- fudge the numbers (very easy, and works every time).
Sure, it's better for the society as a whole if they take the hard route, but it's much easier to take the easy route, and with short election cycles of only a few years, the voters can't usually tell the difference between the 2 until it's far too late.
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