[Christien]

Well, here's how I think about it. I've had my driver's license for 17 years now. In that time I've had 5 incidents which required repairs to a car. All were body work only.

-accident #1: completely the other person's fault (t-boned my trying to stop at a snowy intersection, very minor damage)
-accident #2: at the track (spun the 911 at mosport and crunched up the rear on a concrete wall).
-incident #1: scraped a small tree while backing out of a driveway
-incident #2: forgot to set the parking brake, car rolled back, scraped a lightpost and took the mirror off (I was young!)
-incident #3: someone clipped my mirror with theirs while I was parked on a narrow street.

In all of these incidents, I paid to fix every single one, except where I was hit by the other car, where her insurance paid for it. I never considered putting anything through the insurance (esp. the incident at the track!). For the vast majority of incidents, it's either below the deductible or not worth having your premiums raised. The more I think about this, the more I'm considering raising my deductible to something like $3000.