Colorado parents about to add a teenage driver to the family auto insurance policy need not cringe nearly as much as the rest of the country, a new study of insurance rates found.
Though policy costs can rise as much as 125 percent with the addition of a driver from the ages of 16 to 19, the cost increase to a Colorado family is in the bottom quarter of the nation.
On average, policies in Colorado increased in cost by just 73 percent, the study found. The national average is 79 percent, the study by Quadrant Information Services found.
Surprisingly, policies in New York increased by only about 52 percent — second lowest next to Hawaii — despite New York City having some of the highest auto insurance premiums in the nation.
“Anytime you add a driver that is likely to be involved in more accidents, as well as more serious accidents, the rise in insurance cost will be steep,” said Mike Barry, spokesman for the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute.
The worst rate increase occurred in New Hampshire, where premiums that added a teen driver jumped by about 125.4 percent, followed by Rhode Island, which saw an average increase of 119.2 percent.
“Driving well takes practice, and since all teens are new drivers, they make all sorts of mistakes that more seasoned drivers can avoid,” said Eli Lehrer, president of the nonprofit R Street Institute. “Because of this, they make many more claims, which makes them more expensive to insure.”
Though teens have higher driver-fatality rates, the number of deaths is dropping, the report notes. In 1978, for instance, there were nearly 10,000 teen driver deaths, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. That number has dropped every year since. In 2014, the number of teen driver deaths was about 2,600.
Also there are fewer teen drivers on the road than before. A recent study by the University of Michigan found 69 percent of 17-year-old Americans had a license 30 years ago, but today it’s only 45 percent.
The gender of the teen driver has a significant impact as well, the study found. A male teen added to a married couple’s policy saw an average hike of 91 percent to a policy’s premium, while a female teen was just a 67 percent jump.
