A car insurance premium arrives as one number. It is actually three, and between 2019 and 2023 they moved at very different speeds.
| Year | Liability | Collision | Comprehensive | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | $606 | $355 | $188 | $1,150 |
| 2020 | $587 | $346 | $191 | $1,123 |
| 2021 | $585 | $351 | $196 | $1,132 |
| 2022 | $605 | $371 | $212 | $1,189 |
| 2023 | $667 | $428 | $249 | $1,344 |
Over four years: liability up 10%, collision up 21%, comprehensive up 32%. The smallest line on the bill grew three times faster than the largest.
What each part actually buys
Liability pays for what you do to other people — their car, their injuries. It is the largest component and it is priced off medical costs and legal settlements rather than off vehicles.
Collision pays to repair your own car after a crash. Its price follows what body shops charge.
Comprehensive pays for everything else that can happen to a car, most of it while nobody is driving it. Theft, vandalism, fire, flood, hail, animals, a stone through the windscreen.
Two things happened to comprehensive at once
The first is theft. Vehicle theft climbed sharply from 2020 onward, concentrated in specific models and specific methods, and comprehensive is the cover that pays for it. A stolen vehicle is a total loss claim rather than a repair, so each event costs the full value.
The second is weather. Hail generates enormous claim volumes in single events — thousands of cars damaged in one storm, most of them cosmetically totalled because repainting an entire body exceeds the value of an ordinary car.
Neither of those touches liability at all, which is why the two lines diverged.
Collision sits in the middle for a reason we have measured
21% is between the other two, and it tracks something specific: what a repair costs now compared with 2019.
The parts that get damaged in ordinary collisions are the parts that acquired electronics. A bumper carries radar, a wing mirror carries a camera, a windscreen carries the mount for lane keeping — and each replacement now includes a calibration step that did not exist a decade ago.
We looked at this from the insurers' own loss data and found the same shape: repair cost indexes rose 26% between 2000-2004 model years and 2020-2024 ones, while the cost of damaging somebody else's property stayed flat.
Where this changes a decision
The component worth reviewing is the one nobody reviews. Comprehensive is small in absolute terms, which is why it never gets questioned — but it is the fastest-growing line and its payout is capped by what the car is worth.
On a vehicle worth four thousand dollars, an annual comprehensive premium plus the deductible can approach a serious fraction of the maximum you could ever collect. That calculation is worth doing once a year rather than never.
The opposite holds on a large SUV or truck of any age, where theft exposure stays high long after the resale value falls. Dropping comprehensive there is the expensive mistake.
Either way the premium follows the specific vehicle, and its history is part of what sets the price. A free VIN check shows what is on record before you ask for a quote.
Frequently asked questions
How much did car insurance rise between 2019 and 2023?
The average combined premium across 52 states went from $1,150 to $1,344 — 17%. But the components moved very differently: comprehensive rose 32%, collision 21% and liability just 10%.
What is comprehensive cover and why did it rise fastest?
It pays for everything that happens to the car other than a collision: theft, vandalism, fire, hail, a tree, a stone through the windscreen. It rose fastest because two of those got worse at once — vehicle theft climbed sharply after 2020, and severe hail events kept generating large claim volumes.
Why did liability rise the least?
Liability pays for damage and injury to other people, and its cost is driven by medical and legal inflation rather than by vehicle repair. Those rose over the period, but nothing like the cost of replacing sensor-laden body panels or a stolen truck.
Can I reduce the fastest-growing part of my premium?
Comprehensive is the component most worth reviewing on an older car, because its payout is capped by the vehicle's value while its price is not falling. On a car worth $4,000, the annual comprehensive premium plus deductible can approach a meaningful fraction of what you would ever collect.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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