By Philip 
Most people injured in a car crash assume the hard part is proving the other driver was at fault. In practice, fault is often the easy part. The harder question, and the one that actually determines what you recover, is where the money comes from. California changed its answer to that question on January 1, 2025, when the state raised its minimum auto insurance requirements for the first time since 1967. That change matters enormously to anyone hurt in a collision, and it interacts with a problem the state has not solved: roughly one in five California drivers carries no insurance at all.
Understanding how coverage actually works, and working with a car accident lawyer who knows how to find every available policy, frequently makes a larger difference to your recovery than anything that happens in a negotiation. This article covers what changed, what it means for your claim, and how a California car accident case gets paid.
What Changed: SB 1107 and the New Minimums
Senate Bill 1107, the Protect California Drivers Act, was signed in 2022 and took effect January 1, 2025. It amended Vehicle Code Section 16056, which sets the minimum liability coverage a driver must carry.
The old numbers, unchanged since 1967, were 15/30/5: $15,000 for bodily injury per person, $30,000 per accident, and $5,000 for property damage. Those figures ranked California 46th in the nation for coverage adequacy. Fifteen thousand dollars does not cover a single serious emergency room visit, let alone surgery and rehabilitation.
The new minimums are 30/60/15:
- $30,000 for bodily injury or death per person
- $60,000 for bodily injury or death per accident
- $15,000 for property damage per accident
That doubles the bodily injury limits and triples property damage. SB 1107 also schedules a further increase on January 1, 2035, to 50/100/25.
The transition worked through renewals. Any policy issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025 must meet the new floor. Policies that renewed before that date continued at the old limits until their next renewal, which means claims arising from crashes in the transition window can involve either set of limits depending on the at-fault driver’s renewal date. That detail is worth checking rather than assuming.
Why the Increase Helps Less Than It Sounds
Doubling the minimum is a genuine improvement. It is also nowhere near sufficient for a serious injury.
Consider what $30,000 buys in California healthcare. An ambulance ride, an emergency room evaluation, imaging, and a short admission can consume it before anyone discusses surgery. A single spinal procedure routinely exceeds it several times over. If the at-fault driver carries the state minimum and has no meaningful assets, a case worth $400,000 on the merits may be a $30,000 recovery.
This is the part injury victims find hardest to accept, and it deserves a direct statement: the value of your case and the amount you can actually collect are two different numbers. Liability can be undisputed, your injuries can be severe and well documented, and the recovery can still be capped by a policy limit. No amount of legal skill conjures insurance that does not exist.
What legal skill does accomplish is finding coverage that does exist and that nobody else looked for. That work is where car accident cases are won.
The Coverage Gap: California’s Uninsured Problem
The Insurance Research Council’s 2025 report, covering 2023 data, found that 20.4 percent of California drivers were uninsured, roughly one in five. California ranks 8th highest in the nation. For comparison, Maine sits at 5.7 percent, Utah at 6.2 percent, and Idaho at 6.4 percent. A California driver is roughly three and a half times more likely to be struck by an uninsured motorist than a driver in Maine.
Underinsurance compounds it. Nationally, about one in six drivers is underinsured, meaning they carry a policy too small to pay for the harm they cause. Combined, roughly one in three American drivers is either uninsured or underinsured, a figure that rose about ten percentage points from 2017.
The trend has a driver: cost. California auto insurance premiums rose sharply in 2023 and 2024, and rising premiums push marginal drivers out of the market entirely. SB 1107’s higher minimums, while protective for victims, also raise premiums, which creates real pressure in the opposite direction. Estimates put the annual cost of minimum coverage rising from roughly $670 to over $1,000.
The practical consequence for anyone injured on a California road: there is a meaningful chance the driver who hit you cannot pay for what they did.
Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage: Your Own Policy
This is the most important insurance concept most drivers do not understand, and it is the answer to the problem above.
Under California Insurance Code Section 11580.2, insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage with every auto policy, at limits matching your liability coverage. You can reject it, but the rejection must be in writing. SB 1107 also raised the minimum UM/UIM limits that must be offered to $30,000/$60,000, matching the new liability floor.
UM coverage pays when the at-fault driver has no insurance, and it applies in hit-and-run cases where the driver is never identified. UIM coverage pays when the at-fault driver has insurance but not enough, filling the gap between their limits and yours.
Two things follow from this that people consistently get wrong.
First, your UM/UIM claim is against your own insurer, which means the company you have paid premiums to for years is now the party with a financial interest in minimizing your claim. Clients are often surprised at how adversarial this becomes. It is a claim like any other, and it is negotiated like any other.
Second, UM/UIM has its own notice requirements and deadlines, set by your policy rather than by the general statute of limitations. Some policies impose arbitration provisions and shortened timeframes. Missing a policy deadline can forfeit the coverage even though the two-year statute has not run. If you were hit by an uninsured or hit-and-run driver, this deserves attention immediately, not eventually.
If you take one practical thing from this article: check your own declarations page and see whether you carry UM/UIM, and at what limits. It is the coverage most likely to actually be there when you need it, and it is the one people most often decline to save a few dollars a month.
Where Else the Money Can Come From
A skilled attorney does not stop at the at-fault driver’s policy. Other sources frequently exist.
Employer liability. If the at-fault driver was working at the time, whether making a delivery, driving to a job site, or running an errand for an employer, the employer’s commercial policy may respond under respondeat superior. Commercial limits typically dwarf personal ones.
Rideshare and delivery coverage. If the driver was logged into Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, or a similar platform, a layered commercial policy may apply depending on their status at impact: offline, waiting for a request, en route to a pickup, or carrying a passenger. The applicable layer varies dramatically.
Vehicle or component defect. If a defect contributed to the crash or made the injuries worse, a product liability claim against the manufacturer opens under California’s strict liability framework from Greenman v. Yuba Power Products.
Dangerous roadway conditions. If road design, signage, or maintenance contributed, a public entity may share responsibility. This triggers the six-month administrative claim deadline discussed below.
Dram shop and social host issues. California’s rules here are narrow compared to other states, but they are not nonexistent, particularly where alcohol was served to an obviously intoxicated minor.
Umbrella policies. Individuals with assets often carry excess coverage above their auto policy. Nobody volunteers this. It has to be asked for and, if necessary, discovered.
Multiple defendants. In a multi-car collision, more than one driver may share fault, and each carries a policy.
Coverage identification is unglamorous work that changes case value more often than negotiation tactics do.
How Fault Works in California
California is a fault-based state, meaning the driver who caused the collision is financially responsible. It is not a no-fault state, and there is no threshold you must cross before bringing a claim.
California also applies pure comparative negligence, established in Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975). You can recover even if you were partly at fault, with your award reduced by your percentage of responsibility. Twenty percent at fault on a $100,000 case yields $80,000. Because every point of fault an insurer assigns to you is money they keep, adjusters work hard to assign as much as possible. Fault allocation is argued with evidence, not decreed.
What Actually Proves a Car Accident Case
The police report documents the scene and often includes an officer’s opinion on fault. It is influential but not binding, and it can be wrong.
Physical evidence includes vehicle damage patterns, skid marks, and debris fields. Photograph everything before vehicles are repaired or released, because that evidence disappears fast.
Event data recorders, the black boxes in modern vehicles, can capture speed, braking, throttle position, and seatbelt status in the seconds before impact. This data is often decisive and is not preserved indefinitely.
Surveillance and dashcam footage from nearby businesses, traffic cameras, and other vehicles is frequently the single most valuable evidence in a disputed liability case. It is also commonly overwritten within 30 to 90 days, which is why the first two weeks matter more than the following two months.
Cell phone records can establish distracted driving, but obtaining them generally requires litigation.
Medical records connect the crash to the injury. Gaps in treatment give the defense their causation argument.
The Deadlines
Most California car accident claims carry a two-year deadline from the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure Section 335.1. Property-damage-only claims run three years under Section 338.
The exception that ends more valid claims than any other: if a government entity is involved, whether a city or county vehicle, a transit bus, or a dangerous condition on public property, an administrative claim is generally due within six months under Government Code Section 911.2. Miss it and the claim is typically over regardless of merit.
And separately from any statute, your UM/UIM policy deadlines may be shorter still.
A Note on Proposition 213
California drivers who were uninsured at the time of a crash face a significant limitation. Under Proposition 213, an uninsured driver generally cannot recover non-economic damages, meaning pain and suffering, even when the other driver was entirely at fault. Economic damages, such as medical bills and lost wages, remain recoverable.
This is worth knowing because it is one more reason the coverage question is not a technicality. It shapes what your claim is worth before anyone discusses the facts.
Choosing Representation for a Car Accident Claim
Ask a prospective attorney how quickly they move on evidence preservation, because in a case that may turn on footage with a 30-day lifespan, week one matters more than month six. Ask how they approach coverage investigation, and listen for whether they mention employer liability, umbrella policies, and UM/UIM rather than just the at-fault policy. Ask about their trial record, since insurers price offers partly on whether a firm will actually try a case. Ask who handles the day-to-day work.
On fees, California requires contingency agreements in writing under Business and Professions Code Section 6147, and the agreement must state that the fee is negotiable. Ask specifically whether you owe costs if the case does not succeed, because “no fee unless we win” addresses the fee, not the costs.
Verify licensing and disciplinary history at calbar.ca.gov. Firms with established California car accident practices, including Benji Personal Injury Accident Attorneys, handle this category of claim routinely, but the questions above are how you evaluate any firm.
The Bottom Line
SB 1107 was a real improvement, and it is still not enough. Thirty thousand dollars does not make a seriously injured person whole, one in five California drivers carries nothing at all, and the rising premiums that accompany better coverage push more drivers out of the system every year.
What that means practically is that the outcome of a California car accident claim often depends less on arguing about fault and more on finding every dollar of coverage that exists. Check your own UM/UIM limits today, before you need them. And if you have already been hit, understand that the evidence establishing both fault and coverage has a shelf life measured in weeks.