First of all, what really drives your insurance premium up is the extra coverage for liability and medical, etc. Your bike? Jigga please. If you break a fairing, that’ll cost somewhere between $150-500 bucks to fix (depending on how bad). Insurance companies could care less about that.
But what if you hit a kid while he’s crossing the sidewalk and fatally injure him? The medical bills, court cases, legal fees, etc. to protect you from THAT is what insurance companies really break out the high premiums for. That’s why your insurance costs will jump so much when you start adding in maximum liability and the like.
Now maybe I’m not like most, but I don’t buy insurance for the vehicle. It’s always nice not to have to pay for repainting after that dick keys your car on the UW campus, but that wouldn’t have ruined you. While it’s there more so in a car where the amount of damage really could break the bank, my deductible on bike insurance is $1000: enough to repair a lot of crash damage. Insurance really isn’t for the bike, primarily; it’s for you.
If you total a bike, you’re out $4-15Gs depending on what you ride. That’s a lot of money, and it’d seriously set you back, but a man can recover from an unexpected $8K debt. But if you’re at fault for a serious pileup, the liability, medical, and damage reparations for that can easily approach the million-dollar mark. THAT’s the kind of thing that will permanently ruin you. If you’re in the sights as the target for hundreds of thousands to millions in damages and you DON’T have insurance to protect you…well, you can do the math.
So yeah, my insurance rate is ridiculous. I’ve never gotten a ticket, but I am in my twenties. In a few years I pay more in insurance than I did for my 250R. But that’s because I have maximum coverage on everything. It’s my personal choice, as is everything else in this motorcycle business.