Cyberpunk 2077 car insurance mod wants you to check yourself before you wreck everyone else

Driving recklessly is an open world game tradition. Leaving a wake of smashed cars, dead pedestrians, and downed lampposts behind you is just a fact of life, whether you're racing off on a world-saving quest or just driving to the store to buy a new pair of kicks. The wreckage, meanwhile, is all neatly cleaned up and there's no sign of your wanton destruction the next time you go roaring past that same street corner.

It's not really fair to the citizens of the world whose cars you sideswipe, ding, scratch, smash, or destroy, however, and now a mod has come along to at least balance the scales a little bit.

Spotted by PCGamesN, the Drive Carefully mod for Cyberpunk 2077 creates a new unseen entity in Night City: the NCID, or Night City Insurance Department. From now on, if you bump, bang, smoosh, or scratch another car while you're driving, you'll have to pay a fine.

The NCID is just as invasive as those mantis blades you've got tucked inside your forearms. You, and the entire populace of Night City, have been enrolled in the insurance plan, with your bank account linked to the department's unblinking electronic eye. While speeding around in your car, if you hit another vehicle you'll automatically be fined and the money will instantly be deducted from your wallet.

It's not a flat fine, either. There's a sliding scale for fees, with a head-on collision costing more than a little nudge of someone's rear bumper. The insurance fees typically aren't too devastating, with fines usually totalling less than 100 eddies for minor accidents, though if you really want to punish yourself (or be far more realistic about insurance companies) you can increase the amount each collision will cost you in the mod's config file.

As with all bureaucratic systems, there is a loophole and you can still get away with denting someone else's car without paying a fine. Parked and unoccupied cars won't register with the NCID, so if you're feeling destructive you might want to confine your reckless driving to parking lots filled with empty vehicles. Also, if the driver of a car is dead or incapacitated (and I'm not suggesting you had anything to do with that) you can ram their vehicles to your heart's content and not get fined.

Unfortunately it doesn't sound like the mod pays you if an NPC hits your car, but let's face it, you're most likely the number one cause of accidents in Night City. Slow down, drive safely, and respect the rules of the road, willya? You can find the Drive Carefully mod here at Nexus Mods. It requires another mod, Redscript, to get it working.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.