Car Totaled After Fender Bender or Hail?
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These days, it’s not uncommon to see many new and used vehicles that are packed with high-tech safety features like sensors in the bumpers and even in the windshield. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that they are doing their job, too, by reducing accidents. Here’s the proof:
- Automatic Emergency Braking – 50% fewer front-to-rear crashes and 56% fewer front-to-rear crashes with injuries
- Automatic Emergency Braking with Pedestrian Detection – 27% fewer pedestrian crashes and 30% pedestrian injury crashes
- Lane Departure Warning – 11% fewer single vehicle, sideswipe and head-on crashes; 21% fewer injury crashes of the same types
- Blind Spot Detection – 14% fewer lane change crashes, 23% fewer lane change crashes with injuries.
- Rear Automatic Braking – 78% fewer backing crashes (when combined with rearview cameras and parking sensors)
- Rearview Cameras – 17% fewer backing crashes
- Rear Cross-Traffic Alert – 22% fewer backing crashes
These features seem to be worth the extra cost and time it takes to get used to them, until you have what seems like a minor accident and it totals your car. You read that right! It can happen if the repair costs of the car that has been in an accident reach a certain percentage of the value of the car. (That percentage varies by state.) All the crash avoidance technologies mentioned above make it costlier than ever to replace a bumper, fender, side mirror or windshield after an accident or even a hailstorm because all those parts are the most vulnerable to damage and have sensors that would need to be replaced.
It's More than Just Parts
When there’s an accident involving a part that has sensors, the labor involved in recalibrating the sensors so they work properly when they are replaced is a big part of what drives repair costs up. If these repairs are not done correctly, it can be very dangerous for drivers who have become accustomed to—and maybe even rely on—those features because they may not work the way they should, or they may not work at all. Not all body shops are qualified or equipped to fix new tech, which can result in errors.
How This Affects Rates
High tech safety features are beneficial but they can be expensive, whether it’s including it in a new car package or fixing or replacing it if there’s an accident or damage. The good news is it can greatly decrease accidents. The bad news is the added expense of fixing cars when tech is damaged due to a covered event like an accident or hail is increasing the cost of claims overall, resulting in potential rate increases for drivers everywhere.
As you can see, as surprising as it may be, it’s a lot easier for a car to be considered a total loss after a seemingly minor accident or even hail damage than it used to be. All the more reason to be careful!
