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Does car color impact the cost of insurance?

The color of your car does not have a direct impact on the cost of insurance.  This is one of the big car insurance myths out there.  However, there is an indirect impact on your car insurance.  How?  To answer the question the first thing we need to do is determine what does affect insurance prices.

Several factors affect the price of your car insurance such as:

• Number of tickets
• Driving history
• Car make, model, body type
• Number of accidents
• Age
• Gender
• Location

You’ll notice that car color is not among those factors considered by an insurance company.  That’s because those are all direct factors.  So how do we come up with the myth that car color affects insurance costs? 

Well, the myth centers on the color red.  Several studies have been done that involve people and the color of cars they drive.  In general, it was noted that people who like the color red tended to be more aggressive.  Those same drivers drove faster.  Those who preferred red were in general more reckless than others were.  This is where the indirect impact occurs.  Someone who is reckless, aggressive, and speeds is far more likely to be involved in more accidents, have an increased amount of tickets, and have a worse driving history than someone else.  Therefore, these drivers, with red cars, will in general have a higher insurance rate than others will.  Thus the myth, red cars increase your insurance.  It’s a mistake of causation versus correlation.  This won’t be an impact of the car color, but rather the impact of the actions and psychology of the person who chooses red as car color.

Tags: Insurance