In most cases the rideshare company’s own insurance pays, not the driver’s personal policy. How much is available depends entirely on what the driver was doing on the app at the moment of the crash, and the amounts are set by statute rather than by negotiation.
That last part is what surprises people. Two crashes with the same injuries can have very different amounts of coverage behind them, decided by whether the app had matched the driver to a passenger yet.
This article is by Accident Lawyer of California, P.C., the personal injury practice of Aryan Aliakbarzadeh, Esq. in Northridge, California, admitted to the State Bar of California in October 2012. It describes how these cases work in California; it is not advice about yours.
Why the driver’s own car insurance usually does not pay Link to this section
A standard personal auto policy in California excludes driving for hire. The driver is not hiding anything by having one. The law requires the rideshare company to tell its drivers exactly that, under Public Utilities Code section 5432, so the company knows the personal policy will not respond and carries its own.
This is why rideshare accident claims do not look like ordinary car accident claims. You are usually not dealing with the at fault driver’s insurer at all. You are dealing with a commercial policy the company bought, and with an adjuster who handles these all day.
Public Utilities Code section 5433 subdivision (d) adds something useful. The rideshare company’s coverage does not depend on the driver’s personal insurer denying the claim first, and the personal insurer is not required to deny it first either. Nobody has to be refused before the right policy responds.
Subdivision (e) covers the worst case. If the driver’s required coverage has lapsed or ceased to exist, the company has to provide it from the first dollar of the claim.
What the app was doing decides how much is available Link to this section
California splits rideshare driving into two states, and the coverage changes between them.
From the moment the driver accepts a ride request until the transaction is completed or the ride ends, whichever comes later, section 5433 subdivision (b) requires one million dollars of primary coverage for death, personal injury and property damage. That window covers the drive to collect the passenger as well as the trip itself, which matters if you were a pedestrian or another motorist hit by a driver on the way to a pickup.
When the driver is logged on to the app but has not accepted a request, and in the gap after finishing one ride before accepting another, subdivision (c) applies instead. That requires at least fifty thousand dollars per person and one hundred thousand dollars per incident for death and personal injury, plus thirty thousand dollars for property damage, and the company must carry a further two hundred thousand dollars per occurrence of excess coverage above those limits.
When the app is off entirely, the driver is just a driver. The ordinary personal policy applies, and California’s minimum liability coverage is thirty thousand dollars for injury to one person, sixty thousand for injury to more than one, and fifteen thousand for property damage.
So the practical question in every rideshare case is a factual one. What was on the driver’s screen when the collision happened? The answer sits in the company’s own records, not the driver’s memory, and it decides which tier of coverage you are working with.
The uninsured motorist coverage on rideshare changed in January 2026 Link to this section
This is the part most of what you will read online gets wrong, including some official summaries that have not been updated.
Section 5433 subdivision (b) paragraph (2) requires the rideshare company to carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage of sixty thousand dollars per person and three hundred thousand dollars per incident. That figure was reduced effective 1 January 2026 by Senate Bill 371. Before that date the requirement was substantially higher, so any article or summary quoting the old number is describing law that no longer applies.
Two details about that coverage matter more than the number.
It runs only from the moment a passenger enters the vehicle until the passenger exits. Not while the driver is on the way to collect you, and not after you get out.
It is the company’s obligation alone, and it is primary over any other uninsured motorist coverage that might apply. That means it responds before your own policy does, which is the opposite of how people assume it works.
This coverage is what responds when the person who caused the crash was somebody else entirely and that person had no insurance. If you were a passenger and an uninsured driver ran a light and hit the car you were riding in, this is the policy in play, and the rules that govern a claim against a driver with no insurance apply to it.
Can you sue Uber or Lyft directly Link to this section
Usually not as the driver’s employer, and the reason is a recent one.
Rideshare drivers in California are independent contractors under Proposition 22, which the California Supreme Court upheld in Castellanos v. State of California in 2024. An employer is ordinarily responsible for what an employee does on the job. An independent contractor relationship generally does not carry that responsibility, so the usual route to the company’s own pocket is closed.
That does not make the company irrelevant. Its statutory insurance is still what pays, and section 5433 subdivision (f) says plainly that the required insurance does not limit the company’s liability for amounts above it. There are also claims that are about the company’s own conduct rather than the driver’s, such as how a driver was screened or retained, and those are not blocked by the contractor question.
For a hurt passenger the distinction matters less than it sounds. The money is in the policy either way.
What if a rideshare driver hit you and you were not the passenger Link to this section
The same period analysis decides your claim, and you have a harder evidence problem than the passenger does.
A passenger knows the trip was live, because they were on it. If you were driving, cycling or walking when a rideshare driver hit you, you may have no idea whether that driver was mid trip, en route to a pickup, waiting for a request, or off the app running an errand. The difference between those states is the difference between one million dollars of coverage and the state minimum.
The driver may tell you. The driver may also be wrong, or may not want to say. The authoritative record is the company’s trip data, and it is worth establishing early rather than accepting a version of events that happens to put the crash in the cheaper tier.
If you were on foot when it happened, the duties a driver owes you are the same ones that apply to any pedestrian hit by a car, and the rideshare element changes who pays rather than who was at fault.
What to do in the first week Link to this section
Get checked by a doctor even if nothing seems broken. Adrenaline hides a great deal at the scene, and a gap between the crash and the first medical record is the single most common thing used to argue an injury was not real.
Screenshot your trip in the app before anything else. The receipt, the driver’s name, the vehicle, the route and the timestamps all live in your ride history, and that is your copy of the record that decides your coverage tier. If you were not the passenger, photograph the car, the plate and any visible rideshare decal.
Report the crash through the app, and report it to your own insurer as well, even though you expect the company’s policy to respond. Most policies require prompt notice regardless of who ends up paying.
Write down what the driver said about what they were doing, as close to word for word as you can manage, and the time you wrote it.
Keep every bill, receipt and record of time off work.
The deadline for an injury lawsuit in California is generally two years from the date you were hurt, under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. If a public entity was involved, a city bus or a county vehicle for instance, a written claim is usually due within six months under Government Code section 911.2, and that period runs while you are still in treatment.
If you were hurt in a rideshare in Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley, Aryan Aliakbarzadeh, Esq. will tell you which tier of coverage applies to your crash and what the records should show. Call or text 818-718-2522, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, or use the contact page.