You’re stuck in traffic, inching forward as you pass the scene of a crash. Your first thought is sympathy for those involved. Your second thought might be wondering how you’ll get to your destination on time. But there’s a third consideration that rarely crosses our minds: how crashes like these impact everyone’s insurance rates—including yours, even if you’re the safest driver in Idaho.
Car insurance rates have steadily increased over the past five years. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, car insurance rates rose by about 54% from 2020 to 2024.
What’s the cause of this drastic jump? The data tells the story. Cambridge Mobile Telematics collects about a trillion data points daily through smartphone telematics technology—connected vehicles, dashcams, smartphones, and more. Their goal is to understand and assess risk. They’ve closely monitored how driving behavior has shifted over the past five years and its impact on insurance rates.
We sat down with Ryan McMahon, Senior VP at Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), to talk about:
- How pandemic driving behavior impacted insurance rates
- Why we’re still feeling it today
- What you can do about it (and how to save $$$ on insurance)
To understand where we’re at today, we have to go back to everyone’s favorite year: 2020.
The Pandemic Driving Paradox
When COVID-19 lockdowns began in 2020, roads were empty. People stayed home. Logic suggests fewer drivers would mean fewer crashes and potentially lower insurance rates. Some insurance companies even offered premium refunds, anticipating a reduction in claims.
But that’s not what happened.
“Almost immediately when society started changing, when lockdowns occurred, we saw a huge change in mobility patterns,” McMahon said. “The trips that people were taking were more risky.”
Data from CMT revealed troubling trends: those still driving during lockdowns were doing so more aggressively. Speeding increased significantly. Distracted driving jumped by 34% overnight, he said. Thus, while fewer people were driving, those who were were doing so at greater risk and experiencing high-severity crashes. Eventually, McMahon knew this would be a big hit to the insurance industry.
“We were sounding the alarm early on,” McMahon said. “But no one was really talking about that. There wasn’t this, hit the red emergency button—we’re going to see something we’ve never seen before in risk. And that’s exactly what happened.”
By 2022, the U.S. saw record-high numbers of fatalities inside vehicles, alongside record-high pedestrian and cyclist deaths; 42,514 people were killed.
The Economic Cost of Risky Driving
Beyond the devastating human costs, there’s a financial consequence of risky driving that affects every driver on the road.
“We’re all paying for the result of the deterioration of that process,” McMahon said. “If you look at the Consumer Price Index data, it’s a very clear story that there was a lag in the acknowledgment that these behaviors were increasing risk. There was a lag in the acknowledgement that this risk was costing the insurance industry more money.”
That lag has caught up with us. For insurance companies to stay afloat, they must collect enough premiums to cover the cost of submitted claims. With more severe crashes, claim amounts increase, resulting in the steady increase in car insurance rates we’ve seen, now 54% greater than pre-COVID rates.
Take a look at this graph from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can see when the premiums dipped in early 2020, which was followed by a steady and significant climb that continues today.
What about inflation? Inflation impacts insurance rates indirectly. For example, inflation increases the cost of medical care and vehicle repair, items covered on car insurance claims. It’s important to note that these issues would not impact the industry without a related crash.”
“The crash is the starting point by which inflation comes into the insurance industry; it’s the wound that opens up the industry to infection,” McMahon said.
Your driving alone doesn’t determine your insurance rate—Everyone’s driving does, too.
When claim costs rise dramatically, everybody’s rates go up.
This is a difficult concept for many drivers to accept. Many drivers might think: “I didn’t get into a crash last year. I didn’t get a speeding ticket. Nothing will change.”
But the insurance industry looks at the behavior and risk of a population, not only on an individual basis. Even if you are a safe driver with zero incidents, you may nevertheless see an increase in insurance due to other people’s bad driving behavior.
“The more that those crashes occur, it will affect them [drivers] individually, even if they did nothing wrong,” McMahon said. “Road safety is directly connected to it because the insurance industry looks at the aggregate, and that is the baseline for what they need to collect.”
The Behaviors Behind the Numbers
What exactly are these dangerous behaviors driving up our collective insurance costs?
According to CMT’s data, distracted driving stands out as a primary culprit. In their report, The State of US Road Risk in 2024, they found that in 34% of crashes they detect, a driver’s phone is in their hand within one minute of impact.
CMT’s data, which analyzes the physics of phones while people drive (i.e. tapping, movement, etc) but does not measure who is driving or what apps they are using, shows that people interacted with their phones on average 2 minutes and 6 seconds per every hour on the road in 2023. Out of all fifty states, Idaho falls roughly at the middle to lower end of the scale at 1 minute and 37 seconds of phone motion per hour.
While CMT does not track what apps drivers use, they surveyed 1,200 drivers in 2023 to see which apps are used on the road (not including hands-free apps like podcasts or navigation). The survey revealed Instagram as the most commonly used app while driving (29%), followed by iPhone camera (22%), WhatsApp (19%), Facebook (18%), and YouTube.
The rest of the top 10 includes Gmail, Facebook Messenger, Google Chrome, and Afterpay, a shopping app that enables you to buy now and pay later.
Speeding is another major factor, particularly when it significantly exceeds posted speed limits. CMT data shows that speeding increased dramatically since the pandemic began, reaching 2 minutes and 14 seconds per hour in 2022. In 2023, this figure fell to 2 minutes and 2 seconds.
While the downward shift is encouraging, speeding—especially combined with the upward trend of phone use while driving—creates a perfect storm for severe crashes. The result is devastating.
When people are killed in a car crash, “they were just going somewhere,” McMahon said. “I think it’s really hard for people to understand that every single time they get in their car, they are doing the most risky activity that they’ll probably do in their life.”
These tragedies share a critical characteristic: they’re largely preventable. So why do they keep happening?
“I think it's really hard for people to understand that every single time they get in their car, they are doing the most risky activity that they'll probably do in their life.”
The Collective Problem
There’s an interesting disconnect in how we perceive driving risk. In a recent Idaho Transportation Department survey, most Idaho respondents claimed they rarely drive distracted—yet those same individuals reported frequently observing others doing so.
This perception gap, or cognitive dissonance—”it’s not me, it’s them”—is even more concerning in Idaho, where rural roads and highway systems create unique driving challenges. This mentality prevents many drivers from acknowledging their role in the problem. McMahon calls it “driving dysmorphia”: an inability to accurately perceive our own driving behavior.
“Part of our mind doesn’t really actually believe that these behaviors are risky,” McMahon said. “Part of our mind thinks that this is nonsense.”
This mindset partly explains why changing dangerous driving habits is so difficult. With distracted driving in particular, we’re dealing with what McMahon describes as a “behavioral addiction” to smartphones.
“Unlike a beer for the road, the phone is with you all the time,” he said. “The drink in your pocket continues to refill its cup all the time, through your email, through text messages… it just doesn’t stop.”
Reinforcing Good Driving Makes a Difference
Despite these challenges, there is hope. CMT’s work with insurance companies shows that driver behavior can improve when people receive feedback on their driving patterns combined with financial incentives.
For instance, drivers who agree to their insurance company’s telematics programs—like Progressive’s “Snapshot” and USAA’s SafePilot, for example—receive real-time driving feedback and can earn discounts on their insurance rates.
These programs use data from smartphone sensors, dashcams, and other third-party devices to measure driving behaviors like hard braking, fast acceleration, speeding, and phone use. CMT research shows that drivers who engage with these programs reduce their chance of a crash with an injury by 5.5%.
CMT research shows that drivers who engage with telematics programs reduce their chance of a crash with an injury by 5.5%.
“We don’t really get a lot of feedback as drivers,” McMahon said. “You get instruction when you’re first learning to drive. And then all the feedback happens in one of three ways: one is you get sign language from other drivers on the road, you get feedback from people inside of the car that’s not always taken in the best light, or you get conversation with a public servant on the side of the road with flashing lights behind you.”
Data-driven feedback, on the other hand, gives you real insight into how to drive better, making roads safer for yourself and those around you. Plus, not only do drivers reduce their risk of a crash, they can also save significantly on insurance—often 15% immediately, with some saving up to 34%.
“Most of these programs immediately save drivers money on the first period,” McMahon said. “That’s hundreds of dollars.”
Decreasing risky behavior on the road strengthens the transportation “immune system” for everyone, McMahon said. This can stabilize and even reduce insurance rates.
Why It Matters to All of Us
The connection between road safety and economic impact affects everyone, regardless of driving record or skill level. When severe crashes occur frequently, we all bear the cost through higher insurance premiums—even if we’ve never been in a crash.
Of course, the real cost is often far more serious. Behaviors like increased speeding and distracted driving can result in fatal crashes; the national average is around 40,000 people killed in traffic deaths per year (NHTSA).
“That’s 40,000 plus people dying in cars that should have been at the dinner table,” McMahon said.
The thing is, unlike health crises or other complex causes of injuries or fatalities, car crashes are largely preventable.
“It is totally preventable. That’s the amazing thing,” McMahon said. “This is where data needs to be an important part of the conversation because with data, we understand what causes crashes.”
Whether through telematics programs that provide feedback and incentives, stronger safety policies and legislation, or greater public awareness, addressing dangerous driving behavior benefits everyone—saving both lives and money.
So the next time you’re tempted to check Instagram while driving or push well beyond the speed limit of Idaho roads, remember: your choices don’t just affect you. They impact the safety and financial well-being of everyone in your community. By driving safely, you’re not only protecting lives, you’re also protecting livelihoods by helping keep insurance rates manageable for all Idaho drivers.
