Liability coverage protects other people
This is the coverage California requires and the one most people think of as their insurance. It pays for injuries and property damage you cause to others. It pays nothing toward your own injuries or your own vehicle.
Limits are written as three numbers. California's minimums rose on January 1, 2025 to 30/60/15: thirty thousand per injured person, sixty thousand per accident, fifteen thousand for property damage.
Those minimums are low against real costs. A single hospital admission with imaging and surgery can exceed thirty thousand dollars before rehabilitation begins, and a fifteen-thousand-dollar property limit does not replace a late-model vehicle.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist is the coverage that matters
UM and UIM coverage, governed by Cal. Ins. Code § 11580.2, pays your injuries when the at-fault driver has no insurance or not enough. It is optional in California, and it is routinely declined at purchase to save a modest premium.
UM applies when the other driver has no coverage at all and, under many policies, when the driver cannot be identified — a hit-and-run. Those claims frequently require prompt reporting to law enforcement as a condition of coverage.
UIM applies to the far more common situation: a driver carrying minimum limits and damages that exceed them. Without UIM, a claim worth two hundred thousand dollars against a driver with thirty-thousand-dollar limits is a thirty-thousand-dollar claim.
If there is one line on your policy worth reviewing, it is this one, and the time to review it is before anything happens.
Medical payments coverage, and why it is underused
MedPay is optional first-party coverage, commonly written between one thousand and ten thousand dollars. It pays accident-related medical expenses regardless of who caused the crash, generally with no deductible.
It typically covers your passengers, and many policies cover you as a pedestrian or cyclist struck by a vehicle. Using it does not raise rates for a not-at-fault collision because it is not a liability claim against you.
Its value is timing. Liability insurance pays once, at the end. MedPay pays now, which is what keeps a treatment gap from forming while fault is still being argued about — and a treatment gap is one of the most damaging things that can happen to an injury claim.
Collision, comprehensive and the deductible
Collision repairs your vehicle regardless of fault, subject to your deductible. When the other driver was at fault, your insurer pursues their carrier through subrogation and may recover your deductible along with what it paid.
The practical advantage is speed. Using your own collision coverage gets the car repaired now instead of waiting weeks for a liability determination.
Comprehensive covers non-collision loss: theft, vandalism, fire, weather, falling objects and animal strikes. Both coverages are optional unless a lender requires them, which is why paid-off older vehicles are often carrying liability only.
Rideshare, delivery and the coverage gaps
Personal auto policies commonly exclude commercial use. Driving for a rideshare or delivery service without a rideshare endorsement can leave a gap that neither the personal policy nor the company policy fully covers.
Rideshare coverage operates in periods: app off, app on and waiting for a request, en route to a passenger, and passenger on board. Different coverage applies in each, which is why the first question after a rideshare collision is always which period the driver was in.
Cal. Pub. Util. Code § 5433, as amended by SB 371 effective January 1, 2026, reduced required uninsured motorist coverage during certain periods from one million dollars to sixty thousand. A great deal of published material still describes the pre-2026 figure.
