Corporate greed of the insurance companies plays a part, but it is complicated. There is also the skyrocketing size and price of cars driven by auto manufacturer greed (big luxury SUVs and trucks are way more profitable so they’ve mostly quit making small cars) paired with decades of transportation network design that is hostile toward facilitating any mode of transportation outside of autos and also drives preference for larger vehicles.

Our car-first transportation system encourages a snowball effect where having huge cars all around you incentivizes you to upgrade to a larger car because you have no visibility in a small car once half the other drivers have big ones. Additionally, walking and biking become less safe because the cars’ blind spots get huge and you can’t make eye contact to tell if half the drivers see you when you walk/bike through your neighborhood. You also can’t see around large vehicles at intersections to tell if a crossing has anyone else approaching, so you might as well hop in a car instead of trying to get around via cheaper transportation modes. Tearing a hole in your pants by tripping over a dog while walking is cheaper to patch or replace than damage to a car from swerving your vehicle into a pole while attempting not to run over the dog in your path. People are more likely to end up in the latter circumstance when there are no safe foot or bike paths to get around their neighborhood, so that factors into the cost of insurance.

You shouldn’t need a two (or more) ton personal vehicle to safely take care of small local errands, but our cities are designed where that is the safest option. The more weight something has, the more momentum it has at a given speed, requiring a longer stopping distance, reducing your ability to react to hazards in time, and increasing the amount of energy transferred (and the resultant damage) during a collision.

Incentivizing smaller, lighter transportation options would help from both a public safety and insurance cost standpoint because all the safety features in the world can’t negate the basic laws of physics regarding things like momentum and visibility. The hazard large modern vehicles pose to others within their vicinity also suppresses cheaper modes of transit which increases the frequency that expensive vehicles are on the road, leading to even more vehicle collisions and insurer costs. Cars don’t need to be abolished, but they shouldn’t be the only tool we have left in the toolbox, transportation-wise.