California Car Accident Laws 2024 Guide

California has certain minimum insurance requirements. Drivers in California are required to have the following type of protections in place:

• $15,000 per person in bodily injury liability coverage
• $30,000 per accident in bodily injury liability coverage
• $5,000 for property damage liability coverage

Liability coverage is coverage that pays out when a covered driver injures others. If you cause a car accident, your liability coverage pays other victims but doesn’t provide any compensation for you.

Many people choose to buy more than the minimum required liability coverage. This coverage will pay for legal expenses, as well as damages to car accident victims. The minimum coverage is often not enough to fully pay for all of the losses a victim of a crash might incur.

Drivers in California are required to stop at the scene of all crashes, and must fulfill certain other requirements. For example:

• Drivers must move their vehicles off the street or highway after a crash if no one is injured or killed
• Drivers must pull over and stop if they kill or injure animals
• Drivers who hit parked cars must try to find the owner or must leave a note with their contact details. The collision should be reported to the police or the California Highway Patrol.
• Drivers must report a collision in writing to the police or the California Highway Patrol if anyone is hurt or killed and the police aren’t present at the crash scene. If drivers cannot physically file a report, others who were in the vehicle should make the report.
• Drivers must complete the Report of Traffic Accident Occurring in California (SR 1) form and submit it to the DMV within 10 days of an accident if more than $1,000 in property damage occurred in the crash, if anyone was hurt (even slightly) or if anyone was killed.

Drivers may also wish to obtain other information from the crash scene, such as taking pictures of the vehicles and getting witness contact details. This is helpful for crash victims who want to make a claim against the at-fault driver and need evidence to prove who was to blame for the crash.

California is a fault state for car accidents. This is in contrast to a minority of states that are classified as no-fault states.

In no-fault states, drivers must buy personal injury protection (PIP) insurance. For all accidents where injuries are minor, motorists must go through their PIP coverage to get compensation for medical bills and recover part of their wages lost due to the crash. Crash victims can sue only when injuries are serious in no-fault states.

In fault states like California, no PIP is required. And crash victims can always pursue a claim for compensation for losses from other motorists whose negligence or wrongdoing was the direct cause of the collision.

California also applies pure comparative negligence rules. This is in contrast to modified comparative negligence or contributory negligence.

In states with pure comparative negligence, such as under California car accident law, a crash victim can always make a claim for damages even if they shared fault. However, their recovery is reduced based on their percent of blame. A victim who was 60% responsible for a crash resulting in $100,000 of damages could still sue the other driver to collect up to $40,000 or 40% of damages.

Modified comparative negligence states, on the other hand, only allow a victim to pursue a claim against another driver who was at least 50% or at least 51% responsible for the accident (depending on the state). And contributory negligence states don’t let crash victims pursue a case at all if they were partly responsible for the crash.

There is a two-year statute of limitations that applies under California car accident law. A statute of limitations sets the period in which a lawsuit must be filed. When the statute of limitations has expired, then crash victims have lost the right to pursue a claim because it is time-barred.

The purpose of the statute of limitations is to enable people to move forward with their lives without the threat of litigation and to ensure people sue when evidence and memories are fresh.