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Comment by proggy | Hacker News Reader

You’re not alone. Even the car insurance companies predicted that lower traffic volume would result in fewer incidents and therefore fewer claims overall, to the point of refunding premiums in 2020.

Now, I could get in to how state insurance commissioners found that the companies didn’t refund customers enough…[1] But that’s a bit besides the point — there was a marked decline in monetary claims volume during the height of lockdown. Incidents may have been more severe, but overall volume was definitely lower according to the commissioner’s study in the state of California.

I guess if you just focus on fatalities, it still adds up, but it is still quite a surprising statistic given the circumstances.

[1] https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0100-press-releases/2...

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I was surprised as well, but maybe it was the change in volume that made the change. In that, traffic used to completely suck, where it's hard to have severe crashes in traffic jammed rush hours. Then traffic basically disappeared, so people became used to higher speeds and being lackadaisical with their focus. Then start adding back some traffic but not enough for stop and go traffic. I'm just guessing there though.

I have been somewhat miffed that my rates didn't see an ounce of movement downwards. I already average less than 10,000 miles a year on a 2015 car, which has probably plummeted to easily less than 5,000 miles for each of the past two years, and yet my rates have still been ridiculous with no accidents.

It's interesting (read frustrating) that if you even get a simple traffic ticket your premiums immediately go up because the insurance's "numbers" tell them you're more likely to need a payout, but then when you literally don't drive your car, their "numbers" suddenly don't tell them that you're statistically far less likely to need them.

I always had to inform my insurance company what my average annual mileage was. Maybe try getting another quote? It seems to me a ticket would be an event that could affect your rates, whereas simply driving less doesn’t produce any event that would trigger an algorithm to adjust your rate.

According to a few agent's I've spoken to, the insurance companies are able to pull mileage data from when you do maintenance, such as oil changes. Annual (low) mileage is already baked into my rates, but it's a minuscule if not negligible amount.

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