On January 1, 2026, the amount of uninsured motorist coverage that Uber and Lyft must carry for their passengers in California dropped from $1,000,000 to $60,000 per person. Almost nothing about that change was announced to riders. Most of the legal guidance published online still quotes the old figure, and so does a good deal of the material insurers and claims administrators hand out.
If you were injured in a rideshare collision anywhere in Los Angeles County, the practical consequences are significant, and they run in a direction most people do not expect. This is what actually changed, what stayed the same, and which policy is now most likely to determine what you recover.
What changed on January 1, 2026
The change came through Senate Bill 371[1], signed by the governor on October 3, 2025 and effective at the start of 2026. It amended section 5433 of the Public Utilities Code[2], the provision that sets the insurance floors for transportation network companies, which is the legal term for Uber, Lyft and similar platforms.
Before the amendment, a transportation network company had to carry $1,000,000 in uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage from the moment a passenger entered the vehicle until the passenger got out. That figure is now $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.
It is worth understanding how this happened, because the context explains why so few riders heard about it. SB 371 was sponsored by Uber and Lyft. It moved through the Legislature paired with Assembly Bill 1340[3], a separate measure sponsored by SEIU California that created a framework for rideshare drivers to unionize while remaining independent contractors. The governor, the Senate President pro Tempore and the Assembly Speaker announced support for both bills together[4] in late August 2025, presenting the package as a trade between organizing rights for drivers and lower operating costs for the platforms. Both were signed the same day. The reduction in passenger coverage was the industry’s side of that bargain, and it was framed publicly as an affordability measure rather than as a change to what an injured rider can recover.
The Legislature did build in a check. The statute now directs the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Insurance to study whether the new coverage levels are actually appropriate to the risk, and to report back by the end of 2030. In other words, the reduction is provisional in principle. It is fully in force in the meantime.
The three coverage periods and what each is worth now
California divides a rideshare driver’s working time into periods, and the coverage available changes sharply between them. The Public Utilities Commission maintains a summary of the framework[5], though at the time of writing its published figures had not caught up with the 2026 amendment. The statute itself is the reliable source, and it now reads as follows.
When the driver is logged in and waiting for a match, and during the gap between one ride ending and another being accepted, the company must carry primary coverage of at least $50,000 for death or injury per person, $100,000 per incident, and $30,000 for property damage. It must also carry at least $200,000 in excess coverage for liability above those primary limits. SB 371 left this tier alone.
From the moment the driver accepts a ride request through to the completion of the trip, primary commercial coverage of $1,000,000 applies for death, personal injury and property damage. SB 371 did not touch this figure either. If a rideshare driver causes a crash while carrying or collecting a passenger, the million dollar liability policy is still there.
The uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is the piece that changed, and it has always been the narrowest tier. It applies only from the moment a passenger enters the vehicle until the passenger exits it. Not while the driver is en route to collect you, and not while the driver is logged in and waiting. A number of published guides get this wrong and describe the coverage as spanning both of the later periods. The statutory language is specific, and it is confined to the time a passenger is physically in the car.
And before all of it sits the situation where the app is off entirely and the driver is running personal errands. No rideshare coverage applies at all.
Why the uninsured motorist cut matters more than the headline suggests
The distinction between the two figures is easy to miss, so it is worth being concrete about which one applies when.
The $1,000,000 liability policy responds when the rideshare driver is at fault. That protection is intact. If your Uber driver runs a red light on Olive Avenue and you are hurt, the million dollar policy is the one in play.
The uninsured motorist coverage responds when somebody else is at fault and that person has no insurance or not enough of it. That is the coverage that fell to $60,000. So the scenario that got dramatically worse in 2026 is the one where you are riding in an Uber or a Lyft, doing nothing wrong, and a driver with no insurance runs into you. Until the start of 2026 that situation carried up to a million dollars of protection. It now carries sixty thousand.
Sixty thousand dollars is not a large number against a serious injury. A single surgery with a hospital stay can consume it before anyone reaches lost income or the effect on the rest of a person’s life. And this is not a rare fact pattern. Uninsured driving is common in Los Angeles County, and hit and run collisions, where the at fault driver is never identified at all, generally fall into the same coverage category. California adds a wrinkle to those: an uninsured motorist claim arising from an unidentified vehicle ordinarily requires physical contact between the vehicles, which is why a driver who is run off the road without being touched can face an argument about coverage on top of everything else.
There is one part of the amendment that cuts the other way and is genuinely useful. The new language makes the uninsured motorist coverage the sole obligation of the company rather than something a driver can be left to carry, and makes it primary over any other uninsured motorist coverage that might apply. That is a cleaner structure than the old arrangement. It is simply a much smaller pool of money.
Your own policy is now the most important one in the case
The practical upshot is that the uninsured motorist coverage on your personal auto policy has become far more significant than it was, and this is true whether or not you own the car you were hurt in. Uninsured motorist coverage on a personal policy typically follows the person rather than the vehicle, so it can reach you as a passenger in someone else’s car, including a rideshare vehicle.
It stacks in a specific order. The rideshare company’s uninsured motorist coverage now pays first, up to $60,000 per person. Where your damages exceed that and you carry your own underinsured motorist coverage, your policy may respond to part of the remainder. California underinsured motorist coverage is generally written on a reduced basis rather than stacking on top in full, meaning your limit is offset by what has already been paid from other sources, so $250,000 of your own coverage does not simply sit on top of the $60,000. Even so, a person carrying $250,000 is in a substantially different position after a rideshare crash than a person carrying nothing.
Two related points are worth knowing. First, California raised its minimum liability limits on January 1, 2025, for the first time since 1967[6]. Drivers must now carry at least $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident and $15,000 for property damage, up from the long standing 15/30/5. That helps, but a driver carrying the state minimum is still badly underinsured against a serious injury, and the underinsured motorist analysis matters just as much as the uninsured one.
Second, a personal auto policy generally will not cover a driver while the rideshare app is running. California requires the platforms to disclose that to their drivers, and the Department of Insurance has tracked the resulting coverage gap[7] and the endorsements developed to close it. Drivers who assume their ordinary policy has them covered while working are usually mistaken.
Two provisions in the statute that work in your favor
Amid a reduction in coverage, section 5433 contains two clauses that are easy to overlook and that claims adjusters are not going to volunteer.
The first is that rideshare coverage does not depend on a personal auto policy denying the claim first. The statute says plainly that coverage under a transportation network company policy is not contingent on a personal policy first denying a claim, and that no personal policy is required to deny one. If a claims administrator tells you to exhaust your own insurance before the rideshare policy will engage, that is not what the law requires.
The second is more fundamental. The statute states that nothing in the article limits a transportation network company’s liability arising out of a collision involving one of its drivers, in any action for damages above the required insurance coverage. The numbers in section 5433 are floors on what must be carried. They are not ceilings on what a company can be held responsible for. Where the facts support a claim against the platform itself, for instance in how a driver was screened or retained, the statutory minimums do not cap it.
Why most claims still run through the policy rather than against the company
California voters passed Proposition 22 in 2020, and the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld it in Castellanos v. State of California[8] in July 2024. Rideshare drivers remain independent contractors rather than employees.
That classification shapes how most claims proceed. Because the driver is not an employee, the ordinary route for holding an employer responsible for a worker’s negligence is largely unavailable, so claims typically proceed against the driver’s negligence and are funded by the commercial policy the company is required to carry. Claims aimed directly at the company itself are a different and harder undertaking, and they depend on facts about the platform’s own conduct rather than the driver’s.
This distinction also matters for arbitration. The app terms of service contain arbitration provisions, and injured people often assume those provisions have taken away their right to bring a case. That assumption is usually too pessimistic. Whether an arbitration clause reaches a particular claim is fact specific. It depends heavily on what is being alleged and against whom, and a person who never opened the app at all, such as a pedestrian, a cyclist or the occupant of another vehicle, did not agree to anything. It is a question worth having evaluated early rather than one to assume the answer to.
Proving which period applied at the moment of impact
Everything above depends on a factual question that is settled almost entirely by records nobody at the scene controls. The app data shows when the driver logged on, when a match was accepted, when the passenger got in and out, and where the vehicle was at every point. Whether the crash falls inside or outside the passenger occupancy window is worth a great deal of money, and the evidence proving it sits on a server.
Several things help establish the timeline while that data is being secured:
- A screenshot of the trip in the app, showing the timestamp and route
- The trip receipt or summary emailed after the ride
- The traffic collision report, which sometimes records that the driver was working
- Photographs of the vehicle showing the rideshare placard in the windshield
- Contact details for anyone who saw what happened
Preservation letters need to go out quickly, because digital records are kept on ordinary retention schedules and nobody holds data open as a courtesy. This is also why the period question should not be conceded in an early conversation with a claims representative before anyone has actually verified it.
Deadlines, and the early moves that quietly cost claims
Most California injury claims must be filed within two years of the date of injury under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1[9]. Where a public entity contributed to the crash, and that is more common than people expect when a transit bus or a dangerous roadway condition is involved, a written claim generally has to be presented to that entity within six months[10]. Missing the shorter deadline can end a claim that would otherwise have been strong.
Beyond the calendar, a handful of ordinary decisions do lasting damage. Giving a recorded statement before anyone has established which coverage period applied lets the other side lock in an account of a timeline that has not been verified. Accepting a quick property damage payment carrying broad release language can extinguish an injury claim that has not been valued. Gaps in medical treatment are characterized later as evidence the injury resolved on its own. Posting about the crash, or about anything else being done during recovery, hands the defense material it did not have to work for.
None of these are dramatic errors. They are reasonable decisions made by people who are hurt, dealing with an insurer for the first time, and wanting the situation over with.
Get the coverage question answered before you settle anything
Rideshare claims in 2026 turn on a coverage structure that changed recently, quietly, and not in favor of passengers. The difference between a $1,000,000 policy and a $60,000 one can come down to who was at fault and whether a passenger was in the car at the moment of impact, and those are exactly the questions an adjuster would prefer to resolve early and without much scrutiny.
At Djougourian Law Corporation we handle Uber and Lyft collisions across Los Angeles County, and the useful work tends to happen in the first weeks, while app data is still retained and the timeline can still be established. If you were hurt in a rideshare crash, we will look at what happened and give you a straight assessment of where the coverage actually sits. There is no charge for that conversation and we work on a contingency fee, so there is no fee unless we recover compensation for you.
You can reach us at 818-530-0000 or through our contact page. If you would like to read more about how we approach motor vehicle collision claims generally, that is available as well.
Works Cited
- California Legislature. Senate Bill 371, Transportation Network Companies: Insurance Coverage. Chapter 314, Statutes of 2025. Approved by the Governor October 3, 2025. leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
- California Public Utilities Code section 5433, as amended by Senate Bill 371, operative January 1, 2026. Subdivision (b) governs coverage from acceptance of a ride request through completion of the trip. Subdivision (c) governs the logged-in and between-rides periods. Subdivisions (d) and (f) address the relationship to personal auto policies and the limits of statutory coverage floors.
- California Assembly Bill 1340, the Transportation Network Company Drivers Labor Relations Act. Signed October 3, 2025, effective January 1, 2026. Senate Bill 371 was drafted to become operative only if Assembly Bill 1340 was enacted and took effect on or before January 1, 2026.
- Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. Governor Newsom, Pro Tem McGuire, Speaker Rivas Announce Support for Legislation Empowering Gig Workers, Improving Rideshare Affordability. August 29, 2025. gov.ca.gov
- California Public Utilities Commission. Insurance Requirements for TNCs. Transportation Licensing and Analysis Branch. cpuc.ca.gov
- California Senate Bill 1107, the Protect California Drivers Act, effective January 1, 2025, raising minimum motor vehicle liability limits to $30,000 per person, $60,000 per accident and $15,000 for property damage.
- California Department of Insurance. Insurance and Transportation Network Companies. insurance.ca.gov
- Castellanos v. State of California, Case No. S279622, Supreme Court of California, decided July 25, 2024, unanimously upholding Proposition 22. law.justia.com
- California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, establishing a two-year limitations period for actions for injury to or death of an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. law.justia.com
- California Government Code sections 911.2 and 945.6, governing the presentation of claims against public entities and the period to file suit following denial.
Statutory figures and case authority in this article were verified against primary sources on September 9, 2026. California insurance requirements change by legislation, and the Public Utilities Commission and Department of Insurance are directed to report on the adequacy of rideshare uninsured motorist coverage levels by December 31, 2030.