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You Have a Clean Driving Record. Here's Why Your Car Insurance Can Still Go Up
September 7, 2026
September 7, 2026
Few things are more frustrating for a driver than getting a premium increase notice after years without a single accident, ticket, or claim. The instinct is to assume you did something wrong — but multiple independent data sources show the real story has almost nothing to do with individual behavior.
Claims are simply becoming more expensive to settle across the industry, and those costs are spread across the entire risk pool, regardless of whether you have a clean driving record.
You can be a perfect driver and still live in an imperfect insurance market. Your record matters, but you're also paying for the cost of accidents, repairs, and injuries that occur throughout the pool of drivers your insurer covers.
While a clean record is still extremely valuable as it can give you a discount relative to the risk around you, it doesn't create immunity from market-wide increases.
Contrary to popular belief, your premium reflects more than your personal share of last year's accident claims. Insurers make broader actuarial and underwriting decisions that can lead to rate increases across entire classes of policyholders.
The clearest explanation for rising premiums has less to do with how you drive and more to do with the rising cost of claims. The Insurance Research Council's Trends in Personal Auto Insurance Claims 2002–2022 report found that while claim frequency actually declined more than 2% annualized over that 20-year span, claim severity — the average dollar payout per claim — moved the opposite direction, with bodily injury claims growing more than 4.5% annually.
The report found that claim severity began accelerating in the mid-2010s and increased even more during the pandemic years, partly because of rising medical costs and a more litigious claims environment.
More recent data shows that trend has kept accelerating, not leveled off. CCC Intelligent Solutions' 2026 Crash Course report, which tracks claims and repair data across the industry, found that average paid bodily injury claim severity rose 10.3% in the most recent year alone and 32% over the past four years — a pace that outstrips general inflation by a wide margin.
Every driver in a given risk pool shares in the cost of those payouts, regardless of whether they personally filed a claim. When claim severity rises across the board — driven by higher medical costs, more expensive vehicle repairs, and a more litigious claims environment — insurers adjust their base rates to keep pace, and that adjustment touches everyone in the pool, clean record or not.
For example, imagine 100 drivers insured with the same company, with only a handful filing claims. Even one claim involving significant injuries or property damage could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially prompting the insurer to increase premiums during its next rate revision to help cover future losses.
A second, independent government data source tells a similar story from a different angle. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey tracks how much the average household actually spends on vehicle insurance each year. That figure rose from about $1,528 in 2021 to $1,993 in 2024 — an increase of roughly 30% in just three years, well outpacing overall inflation over the same period.
The IRC's own affordability research, updated in 2025, corroborates the trend: the share of median household income spent on auto insurance deteriorated from 2021 through 2024 as insurers raised premiums to offset inflationary claims pressure, even though today's affordability remains better than the mid-2000s.
The IRC projected the expenditure share to climb toward roughly 1.6%–1.7% of income by 2023–2024, up from a low point in 2021 but still below the 1.9% peak recorded in 2003. That raises the obvious question: If you're a safe driver with a clean record, why is your premium still going up?
It's a fair question: if you've never caused an accident or filed a claim, why does your bill keep climbing? The answer is that auto insurance pricing works on two separate levels.
One level is individual — your driving record, your credit-based insurance score in states that allow it, your vehicle, and your location all determine your discount or surcharge relative to other drivers. The other level is the base rate itself, which insurers set (and periodically raise) based on how much they're paying out across their entire book of business.
A clean record is still a huge plus.
"Think of it this way: if the entire insurance market becomes more expensive, your clean driving record may keep you on the lower rung of the ladder, but the entire ladder can still move upward," Lopez explains.
Just keep in mind that if the base rate for your state, vehicle type, and coverage tier rises 10% because claim payouts industry-wide have risen, your "clean record" premium may rise roughly 10% too, even though your personal risk profile hasn't changed at all.
Rising repair costs compound the effect: modern vehicles increasingly include advanced driver-assistance sensors, cameras, and computerized components that are expensive to replace even after minor collisions. That drives up the average cost of property damage claims, which can contribute to higher comprehensive and collision premiums even if you've never been in an accident yourself. For a broader look at what else moves your rate, see our guide on why car insurance keeps getting more expensive.
According to Lopez, you could go 10 years without an accident or ticket and still receive a higher rate at renewal.
Even against a rising base rate, drivers have real levers to pull. You can bundle policies, raise your deductible, and ask about pay-per-mile or usage-based discounts.
Also, shop around for car insurance regularly rather than automatically renewing your policy. Different insurers price the same driver very differently, and loyalty does not always produce the best price, even for those with clean records.
Whatever you do, Lopez cautions against reducing coverage or skipping optional policies, such as liability and uninsured/underinsured motorist protection, simply to save some cash.
"The reason insurance exists is to protect against losses that could materially change someone's financial life. Saving a few hundred dollars a year by dramatically reducing protection can become extraordinarily expensive after a serious accident," warns Lopez.
BestMoney's guide on ways to lower your car insurance rate walks through the discounts and coverage adjustments most likely to move the needle, our breakdown of multi-policy discounts covers how bundling can offset base-rate increases, and our car insurance comparison tool makes it easy to see whether another insurer is pricing the same risk more competitively.
No. A clean record earns you a discount relative to other drivers in your risk pool, but it doesn't protect you from industry-wide base rate increases driven by rising claim costs, which affect every driver in that pool.
Your insurer's overall claims costs — from other policyholders' bodily injury and property damage claims — factor into the base rate for your entire rating tier, not just your individual claims history. If those costs rise across the pool, your premium can rise even with a perfect record.
Bundling home and auto policies, raising your deductible, asking about telematics or low-mileage discounts, and comparison shopping annually are the most effective ways to counteract broader rate increases. See our full breakdown of ways to lower your car insurance rate for specifics.
Recent industry reporting suggests the sharpest increases of 2022–2024 have started to moderate in many states, though this varies significantly by location. Claim severity trends — repair costs, medical costs, and legal costs — remain the biggest factor to watch.
Coverage needs depend on your state's minimum requirements, your assets, and your vehicle's value. Our guide on how much car insurance you need walks through how to calculate the right amount for your situation, and our overview of types of car insurance explains what each coverage type actually protects against.
A clean driving record is still one of the most valuable things you can bring to a car insurance policy — it's just not a shield against the cost pressures reshaping the entire industry. Understanding that distinction is the first step toward focusing your energy on the discounts and shopping strategies that are actually within your control.
Anna Baluch is an insurance and finance expert at BestMoney.com. With over a decade of writing experience, she specializes in insurance, banking, mortgages, personal loans, and retirement planning. Her work has been featured in publications like Forbes, Newsweek, Fox Business, Credit Karma, Insurify, and Realtor.com. Anna holds a bachelor’s in marketing from Northwood University and an MBA from Roosevelt University. Her goal is to empower consumers to make smart financial decisions.