Cheapest Car Insurance for Drivers with Accidents in California

For drivers with at-fault accidents, one of the more important components that impact insurance cost is where you keep your vehicle. Larger areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento tend to pay more, whereas areas with less congestion generally have lower rates.

The illustration below ranks the highest-priced places in California for drivers with accidents in which to purchase auto insurance.

Price information shown is estimated as the garaging address in California can influence insurance rates considerably.

The vehicle that needs insurance is probably the biggest factor that determines if you can find economical insurance for drivers with accidents. Vehicles with lots of horsepower, a lack of advanced safety features, or a history of substantial liability claims will cost significantly more to insure than safer models. The information below presents auto insurance premiums for a handful of the most economical vehicles to insure in California.

Cost estimates assume single male driver age 30, no speeding tickets, two at-fault accidents, $1,000 deductibles, and California minimum liability limits. Discounts applied include multi-policy, multi-vehicle, and homeowner. Rate quotes do not factor in your specific California location which can raise or lower prices considerably.

Based upon these rates, you can see that vehicles like the Honda CR-V, Honda Accord, Chevrolet Traverse, Ford Escape, and Jeep Wrangler are most likely to be some of the more affordable vehicles to insure for drivers with at-fault accidents. Prices will tend to be more expensive anyway because of the fact that there is more claim exposure for drivers with accidents, but generally speaking those models will have the cheapest auto insurance rates compared to other types of vehicles.

Determining which company quotes the most affordable auto insurance rates for drivers with accidents will require a little more effort in order to find the most economical policy.

Each auto insurance company has a different formula for determining rates in each state, so let’s take a look at the auto insurance companies that tend to be cheaper in California. Keep in mind that California auto insurance rates are influenced by many factors which can significantly increase or decrease the price of your policy. Improving your credit rating, marrying your spouse, or getting caught speeding can trigger changes in premium that may make certain companies cheaper than before.

Best Auto Insurance Prices for Accident Prone Drivers

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USAA has some of the cheapest car insurance rates in California at around $1,143 a year. Wawanesa, CSAA, Century National, and Nationwide also are some of the cheaper California insurance companies.

In the above example, if you are a policyholder with Wawanesa and switched to USAA, you could see savings of in the neighborhood of $3. Drivers with CSAA could save as much as $43 a year, and Century National customers might cut rates by $47 a year.

If you want to see how much you could save, click here or visit any of the low-priced companies below.

Understand that those estimates are averaged for all drivers and vehicles and and are not calculated with a rate surcharge for drivers with accidents. So the company that has the lowest price for you may not even be featured in the above rate chart. That helps illustrate why you need to get rate quotes using your own specific driver and vehicle information.

Discounts on the cheapest car insurance for drivers with accidents in California

Car insurance companies that provide policies for drivers with accidents may also give you discounts that can reduce rates by as much as 25% or more if you qualify for them. A list of companies and a selection of discounts are outlined below.

The diagram below shows the comparison of yearly insurance costs with and without policy discounts. The data is based on a female driver, no violations and two at-fault accidents, California state minimum liability limits, full coverage, and $100 deductibles. The first bar for each age group shows premium with no discounts. The second shows the rates with passive restraint, multiple vehicle, vehicle safety, homeowner, continuous coverage, and multiple policy discounts applied. In this example, the average amount saved each year on auto insurance for drivers with accidents is 16% or $272.

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The example below demonstrates how choosing different deductibles can affect yearly insurance costs when quoting cheap insurance for drivers with accidents. The rate quotes are based on a married female driver, comp and collision included, and no discounts are applied.

google.charts.setOnLoadCallback(drawDfdqcibChart);function drawDfdqcibChart() {var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([[‘Age of Insured’, ‘$100 Deductible’,’$250 Deductible’,’$500 Deductible’,’$1,000 Deductible’],[‘Age 20’, 3713,3395,3043,2705],[‘Age 30’, 2593,2365,2103,1857],[‘Age 40’, 2567,2345,2091,1855],[‘Age 50’, 2245,2053,1837,1631],[‘Age 60’, 2139,1955,1749,1549],[‘Age 70’, 2319,2121,1903,1697]]);var options = {title: ‘Effect of Higher Deductibles on Auto Insurance Prices in California’,titleTextStyle: {color: ‘#333’,fontSize: 17,bold: true},width: ‘100%’,height: 700,’chartArea’: {left:100,top:50,’width’: ‘100%’,’height’: ‘80%’},legend: {position: ‘bottom’,textStyle: {fontSize: 12}},bar: {groupWidth: ‘80%’},colors: [‘#6791b9′,’#75a8d8′,’#98bee2′,’#bad4ec’],hAxis: {title: ‘Annual Auto Insurance Cost for Average Vehicle’,minValue: 0,format: ‘$###,###’},vAxis: {title: ‘Age of Insured’}};var formatter = new google.visualization.NumberFormat({fractionDigits: 0,prefix: ‘$’});formatter.format(data,1);formatter.format(data,2);formatter.format(data,3);formatter.format(data,4);var chart = new google.visualization.BarChart(document.getElementById(‘qcibdfd’));chart.draw(data, options);}

The data above shows that a 50-year-old driver could lower their car insurance rates by $408 a year by changing from a $100 deductible to a $500 deductible, or save $614 by selecting a $1,000 deductible. Youthful drivers, such as the 20-year-old example, could roll back prices $1,008 or more just by choosing larger deductibles. When insureds make the decision to increase the deductibles on their policy, it is necessary to have additional funds squirreled away to enable you to cover the extra out-of-pocket expense, which deters some people from using high deductibles.