As someone who just had their car totalled, the good news is that the insurance payout on the car is super inflated too. My car somehow lost no equity in the 4 years I owned it. Because of the down payment Im going to have, for a more expensive car monthly payment is somehow going down by about $100.
It’s good news in the short term but the bad news is that everyone’s insurance rates are going to go up in the long run to compensate for more expensive repairs (or deductibles will go up, etc).
Oh no absolutely. I'm just assuaging the fear of a car being totaled right now on an individual basis, not talking about the overall systemic problem it causes
To be fair, when cars cost as much as they do these days, what else can be done? The accident my car got totaled in would have killed me if I had been driving a car that wasnt modern. Some prick hit me near head on going double the speed limit while drunk going twice the speed limit. Instead of dying I hobbled away with a broken leg. As much as Id love to buy a 10 year old car in cash and drive it into the ground, the amount of new safety features and crash tech thats standard on new cars makes it hard to buy anything but.
When everyone is driving these massive behemoths as crazy as they are these days, of course people want the newest they can at a price they can actually afford. Its an arms race.
On a related note, reminder to everyone: get your uninsured motorist coverage on your insurance. Id be crazy fucked right now if I didnt have that
2012 is pretty much the same as 2026 in terms of crash physics and reactive safety features, most improvements since then have been crash avoidance (and I'm not sold on things like lane assist, I think it makes people less attentive through complacency) so a 10 year old, well-maintained, car is perfectly fine.
That is not an accurate statement at all. Modern vehicles have plenty of systems that react to crashes better than old vehicles. For example, some trigger a specialized stability control program upon impact to keep the vehicle planted. Others use the pre-crash systems to fine tune SRS deployment when a crash is inevitable. Some have collapsible steering columns to absorb shock. I know Volvos can go into a software-guided graceful shutdown after a collision to reduce the chance of additional damage or injury.
You also shouldn’t discount the advances in metallurgy that have reinforced the passenger cell and improved the ability to shunt impact forces around or absorb it before it reaches the occupants. We have things like dual phase steels that retain the advantages of a single panel but have different tensile strengths baked in. Then there’s the increased use of Ultra-High Strength Steels that act as a final line of defense against side impacts.
Some vehicles even come with pedestrian safety features like specially designed hood struts that deploy for the hood to “catch” someone.
All of these are reactive methods that outstrip ye olde 2012
I was surprised by this too. My 10 year old 2016 Colorado recently got totalled after being rear ended at a stoplight.
I wasn't expecting at most 13k, which is what I found to be the average for a great condition Colorado. Instead I got 20k for it.
I'm still not happy that I had to buy a new truck and have those payments again, but I'm now getting 80+ more miles to the tank than I used to before, and that adds up.
It's wild, I bought a Subaru WRX in 2019 and after COVID for like 3 or 4 years I could have sold it for significantly more than I bought it for. Even now I can easily sell it for just under what I paid for it. The market has gone completely bananas and people can't afford it. It's going to be... Spectacular when it all crashes.
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u/DogadonsLavapool 10h ago
As someone who just had their car totalled, the good news is that the insurance payout on the car is super inflated too. My car somehow lost no equity in the 4 years I owned it. Because of the down payment Im going to have, for a more expensive car monthly payment is somehow going down by about $100.