No doubt they are. A minor shunt in a modern car can damage the radar equipment embedded in the grille. What could have been a new grille and quick spary paint can be thousands in new components and calibration.

Electric cars are very likely to be written off if there is any suspected battery damage,

As for the US it doesn't surprise me. Healthcare costs and the compensation culture payouts are far higher than they are here.

A former neighbour of mine was hit (a minor accident) on the front qurter of their Audi A3, which necessitated the bumper and LED light cluster be changed. Cost - well over £1k.

Healthcars costs - indeed, I forgot about that, especially for the US, but costs over here are going up as wages in the NHS go up (especially taking into account all those members of staff 'employed' on lucrative contracts who don't need to be), plus the increase in recent years in fake whiplash claims (partly from 'crash for cash' incidents).

In UK PI accounts for 9% of claims but 51% of amount paid out (Source ABI)

That does not surprise me, but what does is why the insurers haven't got together and agreed to select the obvious scam claims and take them to the cleaners, pointing seriously expensive lawyers at them and bankrupting them in legal costs, a few headline cases of fraudsters being wiped out financially ought to put a stop to a lot of this, why they've allowed things to get to the stage they are now at i don't understand.

And while they are about it, agree not to use accident management companies, especially credit hire sharks, and go back to sensible agreements where blames can be reasonably applied and mitigate everyone's costs, and if people want an equivalent new car on hire whilst theirs is off the road they select that as an add on when purchasing insurance and pay accordingly.

Funny thing though, just done the annual insurance round up and ours are really cheap, following the usual comparison site check and phone call to see what they can do, Landcruiser at a record low of £221 protected on DL.

The most expensive quote i ever received was for a Sapphire Cosworth, a really nice one for sale cheap at £5k, insurance over £2k, this in the days of hot hatch theft epidemic, i didn't buy it but wish i'd had the funds to buy and dry store it.

Edited by gordonbennet on 07/02/2020 at 13:49

The cost of insurance is based more on Personal Injury claims than on damage to vehicles. Would explain why insurance costs in US so high.

In UK PI accounts for 9% of claims but 51% of amount paid out (Source ABI)

People are driving faster cars, taking more risks (including braking later) and relying too heavily on the plethora of three-lettered acronymn safety features to get them out of trouble.

One thing that makes this worse is that because people are spending more on buying the car and insuring it, they tend to not look after their tyres so much (the only contact with the road) and as tyre fitments have gone to the much more expensive larger, low profile variety, people are more inclined to run them down to illegal tread levels and/or replace them with cheapo ditchfinders or second-hand tyres.

People take more risks getting from A to B because of higher time pressures and traffic levels, which also contributes to worse accidents, especially with more foreign drivers on the roads who are not familiar with local accident blackspots or people generally not paying attention to the road and more on their speedo (to avoid getting caught for speeding), satnav/phone or talking with passenegers.