A study released on Thursday confirms a truism in the insurance trade: If you crash a small car, it will be bad for your health; if you crash an expensive car, it will be bad for your bank account.
But while the report, released by the Highway Loss Data Institute, presents some self-evident truths, it also makes a strong case for looking beyond the usual indicators when researching the potential costs of owning a particular car. The study may also disabuse some motorists from lusting after a Ferrari California or a Porsche 911 Turbo convertible.
?This is sort of Insurance 101 for consumers as to what are the fundamental data that insurers use in order to set insurance premiums for vehicles,? Matthew Moore, vice president of the institute, said in a telephone interview. The Highway Loss Data Institute is affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is financed by the insurance industry.
The 2012 report analyzes insurance claims for collision and injury losses for vehicles from the 2009-11 model years. Collision-claims information can give a sense of the average expense of repairing a vehicle as well as how a repair can affect premiums. Injury data, meanwhile, can provide more information on a vehicle?s crash safety.
The report indicates that the average bill to repair a Ferrari California is around $82,000, making a Maserati GranTurismo or Porsche Panamera Turbo look like a bargain, with average claims around $16,000.
The Mitsubishi Lancer with all-wheel drive, meanwhile, experiences an average claim of $6,221.
Whether the conclusions drawn seem obvious or not, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has required auto dealers to copy the reports from the Highway Loss Data Institute and make them available to customers since 1993. Dealers? compliance with the rule, however, has been lax, to the point that a Congressional bill, H.R. 5859 (PDF), would seek to remove the requirement on grounds that it ?imposes unnecessary burdens on the federal government and the private sector.?
During a hearing on the bill, Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is a car dealer, testified that his sales staff could not remember one out of the last 10,000 buyers who requested the documentation.
Mr. Moore disputes the notion that information reflected in the reports simply states the obvious.
?I frequently field fairly basic questions from consumers about how insurance rates are set, and I think these data go a long way to informing consumers,? he said.
Mr. Moore concedes that most consumers know that an expensive car is going to cost more to insure than a less expensive one. But he says they would be surprised that when it comes to insuring a midsize sedan, there is a wide range of insurance costs. These issues are examined in the institute?s Status Report (PDF), which provides an overview of insurance loss data. Consumers can retrieve information on individual vehicles here.
These resources allow consumers to compare vehicles of different types in a way they cannot readily do with the usual crash test information, Mr. Moore said. For example, they show injury rates in a broader range of real-world crashes, including low-severity crashes, than might be available from other sources that tend to focus on vehicle performance in catastrophic crashes.
Personal injury protection, known as PIP coverage in the insurance industry, pays for injuries to occupants of the insured vehicle, regardless of fault, and is used in states with no-fault insurance laws. In the institute?s composite ratings, the Toyota Yaris is assigned a PIP score of 201, or about twice the average, indicating the payouts are high for occupants of the subcompact. In contrast, a Toyota Sequoia with four-wheel drive has a PIP score of 54, or around half of the average, indicating few claims are made by the S.U.V.?s occupants after collisions.
The Yaris, however, has received the highest rating of Good in the Insurance Institute?s frontal crash test (though it has not been tested in the newer, more severe frontal crash test.) For Mr. Moore, the gap between crash performance and PIP score helps to illustrate the value of the institute?s approach to crash analysis.
?The fact that there are some vehicles, some very small vehicles, that do well in our crash tests, but which don?t do well in the insurance results ? I think many folks don?t think about it in those terms,? he said.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 21, 2012
An earlier version of this post said the Mitsubishi Lancer with all-wheel drive experienced an average insurance claim of $707. The average claim was actually $6,221.
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