The median cost of car insurance climbed to $2,079 a year in 2026, and a growing share of drivers say they are responding by holding onto older vehicles longer and trimming their coverage, according to a survey released by The Zebra as part of its 2026 State of Insurance report.
The findings add a consumer-behavior layer to trends collision repair shops have been navigating on the claims side for more than a year: an aging vehicle fleet, a shrinking pool of insured repair work, and rising total loss frequency.
Drivers plan to hold onto older vehicles
Nearly two-thirds of drivers surveyed, 64%, said they plan to keep driving their current vehicle until it becomes too expensive or too difficult to repair, according to the report. That tracks with industry data on the aging car parc: the average age of vehicles in the U.S. reached 12.8 years in 2025, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions' Crash Course 2026 report. Vehicles between seven and 12 years old now account for nearly 41% of total loss valuations, up from 33.4% in 2020, per the same report.
The pattern holds fairly consistently across driver groups, according to Beth Swanson, an insurance analyst at The Zebra. "Around two-thirds of consumers plan to keep their cars until they are too expensive to repair across nearly all demographics," Swanson told Autobody News "Consumers making less than 75k a year and those with poor or fair credit scores were slightly more likely to say they'd continue driving their cars until they were too expensive to repair, but the numbers are more homogeneous than you would expect."
Rate pressure is pushing some drivers toward self-pay repairs
The survey also found that 45% of drivers said they would reduce coverage or raise their deductible if their insurance costs jumped 10%, and 29% said they would consider canceling or suspending their coverage entirely.
Both figures point toward a trend already showing up in shops: a growing share of customer-pay work as the pool of insured repairable claims shrinks. Repairable claims fell 10.4% through August 2025 compared with the previous year, while total loss frequency reached 22.8% through October, on pace for a second consecutive record, according to data ABN reported in December.
Some driver groups are more likely than others to pull back on coverage, Swanson said. Gen Z drivers were the most likely age group to say they'd consider canceling or suspending coverage entirely, at 48%. Drivers who already carry a deductible of $1,000 or higher were also more likely to consider dropping coverage, at 38%, compared with 29% of drivers overall.
Uninsured motorist exposure
The share of drivers willing to cancel coverage outright also lines up with a separate trend CCC has tracked: the share of third-party claims submitted as uninsured or underinsured motorist claims has nearly doubled over the past three to four years, reaching 16.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Swanson called the 29% cancellation figure one of the more concerning findings in the report. "More than a quarter of drivers (29%) would consider canceling or suspending their auto coverage entirely," she said. "Understandably, drivers are looking for every opportunity to cut costs these days, but this is an alarming statistic that could signal increased risk going forward. If a quarter of people go uninsured, and assuming they're still driving (at least when necessary), that puts a bigger strain on the industry as a whole, since insured drivers end up in accidents with uninsured (or underinsured) drivers more often. It exacerbates the problem of rising rates and expenses when there simply isn't coverage to pay for accidents. Insurance works because risk is spread across a large pool of people, and when that pool shrinks, it means higher risk for everyone who remains covered."
The Zebra's data did not show a direct link between rising premiums and actual coverage lapses, as opposed to drivers' stated intentions, Swanson said.
There was one offsetting data point, she noted. "Our data also showed that 57% of people reported driving less often to save money on fuel," Swanson said. "Hopefully some of these drivers overlap with the ones considering dropping coverage, which would help reduce the number of uninsured drivers actually on the road."
Survey methodology
The Zebra partnered with the research firm Savanta to survey 1,500 U.S. vehicle owners online in April 2026, with results weighted to Census data. The report's premium figures come from the company's Dynamic Insurance Rating Tool, which draws on rate filings compiled by Quadrant Information Services using data from S&P Global.
