What car insurance company are you using? I was paying $600/6mo before I ever had an accident (at 21!) on an old beater car worth nothing, just for liability and with multiple discounts due to a good track record and additional study on defensive driving. Recently I paid $345/mo with All-State after dozens of discounts (All-State is a scam, we all know they're 50% higher on average than anyone else); and now I pay $235/mo with Keystone through AAA. Full coverage on a 2004 Mazda 3 with 58000 miles.

I had one bad year 4 or 5 years ago where I had 2 at-fault accidents that got me booted. I wound up with a $1400/6mo policy ($230/mo), and then a few years later I got a new(!) car (I wanted used... parents wouldn't cosign), and it jumped to about $500/mo(!) for a $15000 car. Switched to All-State, ditched that car for a 2004, I came down to about $280/mo ... and then my policy just slowly crept up, more and more expensive as time passed.

All-State kept giving me new discounts, and jacking up the price in spite of this. No more collisions, no more claims, no points on my license, nothing. Clean insurance history. I passed 25, I got a 'discount' that cost me $50/mo more. Parents said that reaching 25 without a wife is a sure indicator that I'm a high-risk driver and my insurance goes way up, or something stupid. Also All-State tried to tell me that my Mazda 3 is a sports car (so was my Cobalt, as it got 155HP; anything over 120HP qualifies as a sports car, apparently).

I think insurance companies collude. Switching drops you several notches; All-State has tried to get me back repeatedly and gone, "Oh, damn, we can't match their rate!" but now an agent is personally mucking with my file to get me under their rate. I had a friend ages ago that would get a quote from Geico, take it to his agent, and his agent would beat it by $10/mo, every time... did this every 6 months, ratcheted his insurance down without switching.

I want a motorcycle because usually whatever I use the car for is easily bypassed. Bike is too slow sometimes, I can't go all over the place in 2 hours, it takes 8 ... motorcycle. I'm hauling something that fits in a backpack, or nothing at all. I have a 10 mile trip, or I'm going 10 miles out and shopping around and coming back ... bicycle. Bike commute is neglegible, I'd save 20 minutes by car or motorcycle. Saturday I am trying the MTA again, 11 miles out, plus 3 more to go get some meat, plus come back 15 miles from way out there... I'm thinking, if I had a motorcycle ... nah, still ridiculous, this is fine on a bike. All riding around the city, bicycle... commute to work, bicycle. DC, just me? Motorcycle.

Take the miles off the car, drop my premium. I'll get liability on the motorcycle; I have uninsured motorist coverage and medical. Full coverage on the motorcycle? Why? It's a $1500 used ($4000 new) machine, forget that, I can buy one if I wreck it. I pay full coverage on a car to manage the $20,000 I need to shell out to pay the loan off and get another car (actually the car's value is $10k now and the loan is $13k, I got gap insurance, and I'm SOL for a down payment on a new car); risk is way too high. Risk on a motorcycle? Pff. Risk is to me or to hitting someone else; the bike is a negligible toy, I can buy a new one just as easily as buying a new bicycle.

I want the car to last longer, and I want to drop its usage so I can lower my payments. Once I get my loan paid off I might drop full coverage, too ... I'm not totaling my own car, and if another party is at-fault for destroying my vehicle then their liability covers it. Besides, I can get around on a bicycle and motorcycle just fine.