As technology continues to reshape vehicle make-up, the increasing costs of repairs signals a problematic future for collision repair: a rise in total losses. Bob Tschippert, senior vice president of Risk Theory, spoke with FenderBender to assess the driving factors of increased total losses and how the industry can expect to overcome it.
It’s quite the conundrum, Bob Tschippert says: Of course we welcome technological advances that improve vehicle safety—yet, those advances, in theory, will reduce the amount of work for collision repair shops.
Tschippert, senior vice president of the popular underwriting company Risk Theory, wants to throw one more wrench into the future of vehicles: As fewer and fewer automobiles are involved in collisions, an increasing percentage of those crashes are likely to be deemed total losses, thanks to increasingly expensive vehicular technology.
The trend has already begun, according to information from CCC Information Services, which found that the percentage of collisions flagged for total losses—which had remained steady at 17 percent for several years—rose to 18.2 percent in 2015, and 19.5 percent in 2016.
Tschippert spoke with FenderBender to assess the driving factors of increased total losses and how the industry can expect to overcome it.
What technology has been the biggest driver of more expensive repairs?
The airbags have become a key factor. When you think about a front-end collision, you have the airbag sensors that are in the front of the vehicle, and then you have the knee airbags, backseat airbags, safety belt airbags that deploy as a result of those sensors being activated. Fixing those airbags runs anywhere from $1,000–$4,500 per airbag. And when you think about the average cost of a vehicle being $25,000, if you blow two or three airbags in a collision, you’re suddenly at 40–50 percent of the vehicle value just in airbag and sensor replacement.
