For most of 2023, staff at Auckland Panel and Paint have been flat out with repairs and wait times for bookings are on the rise.
"Used to be for next week," branch manager Vladimir Rusimov said of bookings. "People around us are doing two or three months away, some are booking for New Year already."
He said more people are crashing their cars — and AA Insurance agrees.
The insurer's head of motor claims Beau Paparoa said: "267,000 Kiwis have had a collision over the last 12 months.
"When you dive deeper into some of that driver behaviour, you can really see that driver distraction is really playing a key part."
The insurer's latest motor survey found those aged 18-29 were most likely to have a collision, with driver distraction accounting for 34% of car accidents.
Poor weather conditions came in second at 14%, while reckless or dangerous driving came in third at 11%.
"It's anything where the vehicle is moving," Paparoa explained when asked what classifies a 'car accident'.
"That might be a stationary object like a house or a fence, versus either your car being sideswiped while it's parked, through to that typical car park incident that you might see when two vehicles are reversing into each other."
It could also be a more serious collision.
Motor claims are also costing insurers more money. Data from the Insurance Council shows the bill for those claims increased 25% between 2020 and last year.
AA Insurance said the price of vehicle parts isn't helping.
"A usual bumper that had maybe 10 components and now coming with 100 components to it and so there's the complexity of the repair, the increased repair time and obviously on top of that, there's the cost of those parts too, they're more expensive," Paparoa said.
He said these increasing claims, and costs, could impact customers' insurance premiums.
'We'll do everything we can in terms of managing those costs as best we can... you're driving around in a chunk of metal, we want to make sure people get from point A to point B as safely as possible."
SHARE ME