Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

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[–] 14 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Apparently a part of that is that EVs are more expensive to insurance companies, so they are spreading that cost around.
My insurance jumped by about 20% as well, after discounts from shopping around.
It cant just be EVs, but when i was searching this was the main reported factor.

Or, all the insurance companies just decided to massively bump rates

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    My understanding is that they all got together and decided to raise rates across the board.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    My completely uninformed guess is:

    1. we all forgot how to drive like normal people during/after lockdowns and,
    2. cars continue to get bigger and heavier, so accidents are more likely to result in total loss
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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I bet you all the insurance companies are using a service that provides pricing via algorithms. In their opinion it's not collusion, just math.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    pricing via algorithms

    This is essentially what all insurance is. Actuary tables, risk analysis, so forth. All math with the single purpose to ensure that over the whole risk pool, the House wins.

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