Who Has the Cheapest Durham Auto Insurance Quotes for College Students?

For students in college, one of the big considerations that help determine insurance cost is the neighborhood you call home in Durham. Areas with more people or higher crime rates will most likely pay more, whereas areas with less people or fewer weather incidents have the benefit of cheaper car insurance.

The following table lists the most costly cities in North Carolina for college students to purchase a policy in. Durham ranks #5 with an annual cost of $789 for the average insured, which is about $66 each month.

Price information shown is approximated as the specific zip code location can impact premium rates greatly.

The vehicle model driven is one of the main factors when comparing the most economical coverage for college students. Vehicles with more horsepower, poor crash test ratings, or high incidents of liability claims will cost significantly more to insure than more modest models. The information below showcases auto insurance prices for a selection of the cheapest automobiles to insure in North Carolina.

Data rating is based on single male driver age 20, no speeding tickets, no at-fault accidents, $1,000 deductibles, and North Carolina minimum liability limits. Discounts applied include claim-free, and safe-driver. Estimates do not factor in specific Durham, NC garaging location which can increase or decrease coverage prices noticeably.

Based on these rates, vehicles like the Honda Accord, Honda CR-V, Ford Escape, Toyota Prius, and Jeep Wrangler are most likely going to be some of the most affordable vehicles to insure for students in college. The cost of a car insurance policy will tend to be more expensive anyway because of the fact that there is more risk for college students, but overall those vehicles will probably have the best insurance prices that you’ll find.

Finding out which insurers offer the cheapest auto insurance rates for college students takes a bit more work in order to find the best policy. Each auto insurer uses their own method for setting prices, so let’s rank the auto insurance companies with the most affordable rates in Durham, NC.

Find the Cheapest Auto Insurance for College Students

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Progressive may have some of the cheapest car insurance rates in Durham at around $651 per year. Utica National, GEICO, Penn National, and Liberty Mutual also rank well as some of the lowest-priced Durham, NC car insurance companies.

As depicted above, if you are a policyholder with GEICO and switched to Progressive, you could earn yearly savings of in the neighborhood of $69. Customers with Penn National may save as much as $74 a year, and Liberty Mutual customers might cut rates by $77 a year.

To compare your rates to other North Carolina insurance companies, click here to get a free quote or feel free to get quotes from the companies below.

Remember that these premium estimates are averaged for all insureds and vehicles and do not take into consideration a specific location for college students. So the auto insurance company that fits you best may not even be in the top 20 companies in the list above. That point stresses why you need to compare rates from as many companies as possible using your own personal information and vehicle type.

Picking the best insurer can be difficult considering how many companies sell insurance in Durham. The information in the next section can help you select which car insurance companies you want to consider when insurance shopping for college students.

These ratings are only made up of large nationwide companies, so companies that focus mainly on North Carolina business are not factored into the list. To compare prices from the most competitive companies in North Carolina, click this link.

Top 10 Major Auto Insurers in Durham Ranked by Claims Service

1. Travelers
2. Nationwide
3. Allstate
4. State Farm
5. Liberty Mutual
6. GEICO
7. American Family
8. Esurance
9. Titan Insurance
10. AAA Insurance

Top 10 Major Auto Insurers in Durham Ranked by A.M. Best Rating

1. Travelers – A++
2. USAA – A++
3. GEICO – A++
4. State Farm – A++
5. Titan Insurance – A+
6. Esurance – A+
7. Progressive – A+
8. Nationwide – A+
9. The Hartford – A+
10. Allstate – A+

Difference between liability only and full coverage rates

Saving money when shopping for auto insurance is important to the majority of vehicle owners, and one of the easiest ways to pay lower rates for insurance for college students is to not buy comprehensive and collision coverage. The illustration below shows the difference between yearly insurance costs with full coverage and liability only. Data assumes no accidents or driving violations, $250 deductibles, drivers are single, and no additional discounts are factored in.

As an overall average, comprehensive and collision coverage on your policy costs $1,785 per year more than buying just liability insurance. Many drivers may wonder when is it safe to stop buying full coverage. There is no definitive guideline for excluding comp and collision coverage, but there is a general guideline you can use. If the annual cost of your full coverage insurance is about 10% or more of the settlement you would receive from your company, then you might want to think about dropping full coverage.

For example, let’s assume your vehicle’s claim settlement value is $3,000 and you have $1,000 full coverage deductibles. If your vehicle is destroyed, the most your company would pay you is $2,000 after paying your policy deductible. If it’s costing in excess of $200 a year for comprehensive and collision coverage, then it may be the right time to buy liability only.

The diagram below demonstrates how deductible levels can influence insurance costs when researching cheap insurance for college students. The premiums are based on a single male driver, full physical damage coverage, and no policy discounts are applied.

As shown above, a 40-year-old driver could save $244 a year by switching from a $100 deductible to a $500 deductible, or save $368 by using a $1,000 deductible. Youthful drivers, like the 20-year-old category, could potentially save as much as $808 annually just by using higher deductibles. When increasing deductibles, it will be important to have enough in a savings account to be able to cover the extra out-of-pocket expense, which is the primary disadvantage of high deductibles.

The benefits of price comparisons

North Carolina auto insurance rates are calculated based on many things that control the cost of coverage. Simply having another birthday, moving across town, or getting a few speeding tickets may cause policy rate changes resulting in some companies being affordable when they were higher priced.

Not only that, but auto insurance companies change rates as often as every three months in order to be able to pay unexpected claims. Higher than normal claims may cause higher priced premiums, while a better claims history can produce lower-cost Durham car insurance rates.

For instance, the graph below shows which companies have the cheapest car insurance in Durham, NC for a 35-year-old male driver with no prior claims, no tickets, and great credit. If we estimate rates based on his personal profile, Utica National quotes the cheapest car insurance rates in Durham at $711 annually. This is $161 less than the average rate paid by North Carolina drivers of $872. Progressive, NC Farm Bureau, Penn National, and GEICO are also on the list of the cheapest Durham, NC auto insurance companies.

The next chart shows rates after we give the driver from the above example an accident claim, bad credit, and a speeding ticket. Because each insurer uses a different method to set policy rates, getting updated rate quotes will most likely result in a new list of affordable companies as shown below.

State Farm now has the cheapest price in Durham with Titan, Auto-Owners, National General, and Erie completing the list. This example shows why it is critical to compare many different companies to find cheap car insurance quotes for college students.

Rates are calculated by many risk factors and change frequently, so the cheapest rate six months ago may now be quite expensive.