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I've been with State Farm for 20 years. Actual agent I have met with a few times. Have had one or two claims over the years and they worked with me pretty reasonably. My rates have never "jumped" but have had what I'd consider some minor bumps over the years. Of the many companies I've dealt with, they're one that has at least not given me a huge headache.

I don't have anything to do with them other than being a client, and mileage always varies, this is just my experience. I call out a lot of shitty companies, seems worth letting others know if one isn't terrible. (Also, I live in a major metro, no idea what it would be like someplace else.)

And also insurance companies charging just as much as they can get away with.

The US system is designed to squeeze every last penny out of a person, to the point they can still "survive," but not so much that they become destitute and can no longer buy things and pay for essential services.

People insist on outlawing speed cameras and red light cameras, driving up accident rates and severity.

I can't speak for your state, but red light cameras started being a great source of revenue from fines, so people started rigidly adhering to them. So this caused two problems.

1. While there were less T-bone accidents meaning people running red lights and hitting perpendicular traffic, all other types of accidents increased by 18% because people were hard stopping so as not to get fined and getting rear ended. source. So if your point is lower costs because of fewer accidents, Red light cameras increased accidents.

2. Because people were not running lights anymore, the fines from red light cameras went down. The money was so good that cities got greedy, they started randomly decreasing yellow light times to cause more people to run red lights to increase fines again video source

Red light cameras cause accidents because people slam on their brakes too hard.

You forgot the big part

As an example, progressive insurance

It’s more profitable to raise rates, and they can get away with it

Some of these are valid. But speed cameras do fuck all for safety. They are a private company scam to take money from people

Those first two, the "people" are largely the auto manufacturers.

Smaller and cheaper cars are SUPER popular in the rest of the world and are literally not available at all in the US. The auto mfgs will tell you it is because of US preference, but in a country of 330 million, there doesn't need to be that much demand compared to these vehicles popularity in, say, a cheese-loving nation of 65 million. Even if they are immensely less popular, there is still MORE than enough market for some of these ALREADY-BEING-PRODUCED vehicles.

But the US auto mfgs refuse. They go bigger and more expensive. The US consumer has no real choice.

For your fourth and fifth, the "people" are US civil/transportation engineers. They must be stopped. They are a scourge. There's no culture of safe road engineering in the US. AASHTO are an association of insane fuckwits.

I am incredibly skeptical that the behaviors of US drivers are significantly different than anywhere else in the world. I'm pretty skeptical of worries over inspections or licensing requirements and am CERTAIN that additional police enforcement will only cause more mayhem and death and not protect any life. I believe it's almost entirely a problem of road engineering, urban design, and vehicle design.

People insist on driving more expensive cars, driving up replacement and repair costs.

It's not like the average US consumer has a say in this. The cheapest car you can drive off a lot is like 25k now. We could have less expensive cars but for half a century we've used tariffs to provide an unfair competitive advantage to our domestic motor companies who only took advantage of it to price gouge.

Another factor (in the US at least) is over-litigation of any and all traffic incidents. Seems like the default practice now is to get lawyers involved for a fender bender that breaks one tail light. The "at fault" drivers insurance ends up using lawyers to go back and forth haggling with the "victim" drivers lawyers and they finally settle on some ridiculous payment that is 10x what the actual damage was. All that cost gets passed on to everybody who buys car insurance.

Speed limits dont decrease acidents. They are the most famous example of a safety feature not working

Two years ago I was paying 1300 a year now I'm paying 1700 for six months and I've literally had nothing change in my driving record.

Used car prices went up, new car prices went up, collision repair prices went up, and repair time increased significantly. We also saw a huge increase in accident severity and a growing trend toward more aggressive driving.

The article lists several factors:

Because car prices in general have skyrocketed, more Americans are keeping their current cars for longer. This means costly repairs can become more likely, and the car insurers have adjusted their rates accordingly.

In the last year, car repair prices also climbed 7 percent, outpacing inflation by more than double.

A supply chain slowdown and ongoing labor shortages have also pushed the insurance industry to implement price hikes on customers, insuranceQuotes.com analyst Michael Giusti said.

"None of that even mentions the higher medical costs they have to pay after accidents," Giusti said. "Today's higher premiums are just a reflection of those higher costs."

The sudden rise of electric vehicle purchases also carried some of the blame, since EVs are more expensive to purchase and repair, Henn said.

My car insurance went up $1200 this year, which blows my mind. No reason given.

Kind of like jobs. If you stay with the same company for more than a couple years, you're probably doing yourself a disservice.

What car do you have? Is it a Kia or Hyundai?

My car insurance went up $1200 this year, which blows my mind. No reason given.

Damn, what the hell. I pay about 15% of that for comprehensive coverage here in Germany. I guess that evens it out with the cheap fuel that you guys have.