Car insurance is surrounded by more misinformation than almost any other type of insurance. Some of these myths get passed down from parents to kids, some spread through casual conversations with friends, and others simply persist because they sound logical even though they are not actually true.
The problem is that believing these myths can lead to real financial mistakes, from overpaying for coverage you do not need to skipping protection you actually should have.
Insurance pricing is based on statistics and risk models that most people never see directly, which leaves plenty of room for assumptions to fill the gaps. Unfortunately, many of those assumptions are simply wrong, and they can cost you money or leave you underprotected exactly when you need coverage the most. Some myths cause people to overpay for coverage they do not actually need, while others create dangerous blind spots by convincing drivers they are protected in situations where they are not.
What makes these myths especially tricky is that many of them contain a small grain of truth. A myth rarely comes from nowhere, it usually starts as a fact that applied to one specific situation and then gets generalized into a rule that people apply far too broadly. Recognizing that pattern is often the first step toward telling a genuine insurance fact from a myth that just sounds like one.
Let’s clear up fourteen of the most common auto insurance myths, explain where each one comes from, and lay out what is actually true instead.
Myth 1: Red Cars Cost More to Insure
This might be the most persistent car insurance myth of all, and it simply is not true. Insurers do not track the color of your vehicle when calculating your premium. What actually matters is the make, model, year, engine size, safety rating, and repair costs associated with your specific vehicle, none of which have anything to do with paint color. A red sports car costs more to insure than a beige sedan because it is a sports car, not because it is red.
This is worth remembering the next time you are shopping for a new car purely for fun, since choosing a color you love will never affect your premium one way or the other.
The reality: This myth likely persists because red is often associated with speed and sportiness, and sports cars genuinely do tend to cost more to insure due to their performance specs and higher repair costs, not their color. If you painted that same sports car black, blue, or white, the premium would stay essentially the same.