Average payments on US auto bodily injury claims climbed at more than double the rate of medical care inflation between 2017 and 2022, according to a newly released study built from one of the largest claims datasets ever assembled for the line.
The Insurance Research Council (IRC) drew on its new Auto Injury Claims Analytics Database, a pooled dataset contributed by nine insurers representing roughly 43% of the US private passenger auto market. The database covers more than 7.4 million auto injury claims closed with payment over the five-year study window, giving researchers a claim-level view of payments, medical bills and legal involvement that has been difficult to assemble at this scale before.
Average bodily injury claim payments rose from approximately $14,000 in 2017 to more than $20,000 in 2022, an annualized increase of 7.8%. The pace of growth was described as moderate in the years before the pandemic before accelerating substantially from 2020 onward, a pattern that mirrors what several other industry studies have flagged around the same period, including AM Best's work on commercial auto loss severity.
General damages, the non-economic portion of a settlement covering pain and suffering rather than direct medical costs, appear to be doing much of the work in pushing payments higher.
For every dollar of medical bills paid on a bodily injury claim, total settlement value rose from $1.80 in 2017 to more than $2.30 by 2022, meaning medical costs are increasingly acting as a multiplier on final payouts rather than a fixed cost insurers can predict.
The study also found a marked rise in attorney involvement. Across all coverages, the share of claimants represented by an attorney rose from 40% in 2017 to nearly 50% in 2022, with bodily injury claimants seeing the sharpest increase, up 11 percentage points. Litigation rates nearly doubled over the same period, climbing from 10% to 18% of claimants.
That shift carries a real cost for claimants themselves, not just insurers. Represented bodily injury claimants waited a median of almost 440 days for their claim to close, more than twice as long as unrepresented claimants. After accounting for medical costs and legal fees, represented claimants also netted less per dollar of medical bills paid, $1.40 versus $1.80 for those who went without an attorney.
Patrick Schmid, president of the IRC and chief insurance officer at the Insurance Information Institute, said the new database gives the industry an unusually detailed look at what is driving claim costs higher.
"Rising medical costs, boosted by general damages settlements, and increasing attorney involvement and litigation are all putting sustained upward pressure on claim severity, and ultimately, on insurance affordability for consumers," Schmid said.
The data gives brokers advising personal auto and commercial fleet clients a firmer basis for a conversation many have already been having: why premiums keep climbing even when a client's own driving record and claims history remain clean. Rather than relying on anecdote, brokers now have claim-level figures showing that litigation dynamics and settlement structure, not crash frequency, are driving much of the increase.
The findings also reinforce a narrative insurer trade groups have been pushing for the past two years, warning that legal system abuse is squeezing affordability, while claims executives have separately pointed to third-party litigation funding and nuclear verdicts as structural, not cyclical, cost drivers. The IRC data gives that argument an empirical, claims-level foundation that had previously rested more heavily on survey data and industry anecdote.
One limitation is worth noting for anyone citing the figures. The underlying dataset, drawn from the IRC's report, ran through mid-2022, meaning it does not capture the most recent two years of claims activity.
More current data suggests the pressure has not eased. CCC Intelligent Solutions' 2026 Crash Course report found bodily injury claim severity rose a further 10.3% year-over-year into 2025, up 32% over four years, even as frequency on other auto coverages softened.
The two datasets point to a bodily injury line that has been getting more expensive to settle for the better part of a decade, with no clear sign yet of that trend flattening out.
