Pinole-Hercules Car Insurance Rates among Highest in Bay Area

I often wonder if I'm paying too much for my car insurance. I don't drive anything fancy (a 1999 Dodge Intrepid, jealous?), but insurance is still expensive.

"Hey how much do you pay for car insurance?" — not the most polite question. Not one I walk around asking.

So when I got an email about this Nosy Neighbor tool I thought it was pretty cool to see, at least geographically, how my rates compare to my neighbors', and how much I might be paying if I lived somewhere else. 

Nosy Neighbor has pulled quotes across many of the nation's zip codes for a typical adult driver — a 40-year-old mam who drives 12 miles each way to work. Of course, the vast majority of drivers are not this archetype, but the 40-year-old man model shows a good average from which there isn't a huge amount of variance among different demographics as far as insurance premiums. 

Compared the rest of the Bay Area, insurance rates in Pinole-Hercules are quite high. Quotes from six national carriers show a range in yearly cost from $823 to $2,354 in Pinole and $948 to $2,430 in Hercules. Rates are higher in San Francisco, with high quotes topping $3,000, but down in Santa Cruz County, premiums are nearly half that price.

Check out how the local rates compare to other towns and cities from Gilroy up to Larkspur below.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the cheapest place to insure a car in the United States is rural Arizona, specifically Bullhead City, where the average price is $730 annually. Meanwhile, the Detroit suburbs are on the opposite end of the spectrum. The most expensive place in the country to insure a car is Highland Park Michigan, with an average yearly price of $4,214.

In California, Los Angeles County boasts the most expensive zip codes for car insurance, while Los Olivos, population 1,132, is the cheapest town in the state to keep a car protected.