You tapped the brakes too late at a red light. The crunch of metal was barely louder than your groan. It wasn’t a bad crash—just a busted bumper and a bent hood. At least, that’s what you thought. A week later, the insurance adjuster calls: “It’s totaled.” Wait—what? How did a minor fender bender just kill your car? The answer: modern vehicles are more disposable than ever–or at least treated that way–and it’s costing all of us.

More crashes, more write-offs

Axios recently dug into the rising rate of vehicles deemed a total loss after collisions, citing LexisNexis Risk Solutions data. In 2018, only 19% of insurance claims ended with a totaled car. By 2023, that number had shot up to 27%. That’s an increase of 42% in just five years. While Axios focused on high-tech repair costs and rental car prices to explain the shift, there may be a lot more to this story.

Let’s be real—cars today are built differently. Not worse, necessarily, but differently. They’re bigger, heavier, and jam-packed with electronics. The result? More damage when they crash, costlier repairs, and more insurance companies deciding it’s just not worth fixing your ride. There are many nuances to how and why this might be happening, but the bottom line is that more and more cars are being totaled by insurance companies after crashes. More and more cars are being treated as disposable.

Modern cars don’t get fixed—they get replaced

According to Axios, repairing modern cars isn’t just about bolting on a new bumper. “Advanced driver assistance systems—such as lane-departure warning and rear-cross alerts—‘have to be recalibrated with any accident,’” Chris Rice from LexisNexis Risk Solutions explained. That means what used to be a simple bodywork job now comes with a tech bill that can rival your laptop’s price tag.

But that’s not the only issue. Automakers have quietly shifted toward more disposable components—plastic brackets, pre-welded assemblies, and structural parts designed to crumple beyond repair. The result? Fewer repairable cars. “It’s almost a perfect storm,” said Frank Cesario, a senior director for claims at LexisNexis.

Insurance companies aren’t going to wait for backordered parts

There’s another problem: if your car does get repaired, you might be waiting months for parts. Post-pandemic supply chain issues haven’t fully gone away, and insurance companies don’t want to foot the bill for a rental car while your fender sits in a warehouse across the country. Axios reports that long repair times are driving up the percentage of cars “totaled” as insurance companies “decide they’d rather fund a replacement than go through the process of repairing a vehicle that’s been damaged.”

The bad news: we all pay the price

If your car gets totaled, it’s not just your problem. The more vehicles that get written off, the higher the cost of insurance for everyone. The average price of full auto coverage jumped 15% in 2024, according to Insurify data, It’s expected to climb another 5% this year. That’s on top of rising car prices, expensive replacement parts, and fewer affordable used cars on the market. Whether your concerns are economic–or environmental–increasingly disposable cars is not the direction our society should be moving.

You used to worry about accidents for safety reasons. Now, you have to worry about them for financial ones, too. As repair costs soar and insurance companies total more vehicles than ever, car ownership is getting more expensive. Worse, automakers seem content to make cars that are harder—not easier—to fix. If this trend continues, a small crash might be enough to send your car to the scrapyard.

Want to weigh in on the conversation? Check out my Twitter post here:

In just 5 years, "total deductions" by insurance companies skyrocketed 42%
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Insurance premiums will be up 20% by the end of the year
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Effect of how cars are built now? Crashes getting worse? Blatant money grab? Or something else?
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What do you think?

— Henry Cesari (@HenryCesari) March 4, 2025