How Much Does Car Insurance Go Up After An Accident?
Insurance can seem like an obscure, inscrutable thing – we’re here to try to explain things in plain English. One of the advantages to having a single insurer in MPI is that we don’t have to guess at how much your car insurance rates might go up after an accident – they tell us.
First, we can look at how your Autopac premium is determined. There are four factors listed by MPI:
- The kind of vehicle you have
- What you use your vehicle for
- Where you live
- Your driving record
For our purposes, then, we can focus exclusively on how your driving record affects your premium:
The way your driving record affects your premium can be calculated using the Driver Safety Rating (DSR). As you can see, the DSR affects your premium in two ways:
- It sets your base DSR driver premium
- It can provide a vehicle premium discount
Consequently, you can find out how much your car insurance will go up after an accident by determining what your current DSR is, how that accident could affect your DSR, and how your premium will be affected by your new DSR.
The next step, then, is figuring out how much an accident can decrease your DSR. MPI has, conveniently enough, provided a calculator in which you can input your current DSR, alongside a number of potential violations, from not wearing a seatbelt to having blood alcohol levels above .08%.
There are three categories directly related to what most of us might call an accident: a claim for which you’re 49% or less at fault, a claim for which you’re 50% or more at fault, and collision with wildlife. These affect your DSR as follows:
49% or less at fault: Does not affect DSR
50% or more at fault: -5 DSR
Collision with wildlife: Does not affect DSR
Another category, failing to stop at the scene of an accident, gives you a whopping -15 DSR. This probably goes without saying, but you must stop at the scene of an accident.
You may find that an accident increases your premium by so much that you’d rather have paid for the accident yourself. In these circumstances, MPI offers a claim buyback system. Let’s say you were 50% at fault; you could pay MPI back the 50% they paid towards repairing your vehicle/other vehicles. MPI would then not decrease your DSR. Note that not every claim can be bought back, and that you’ll have to call MPI to know if you can, in fact, buy back that particular claim.
And that’s everything you need to know about how an accident can affect your insurance rates! Our automobile insurance in Winnipeg is here to make it easier for you to understand how insurance works, what can affect your insurance rates, and what you can do to get the best protection without breaking the bank. Should you have any questions at all, we’re here to help.