Uninsured Motorist and Hit-and-Run Claims in California

If the driver who hit you fled or had no insurance, your own uninsured motorist coverage can pay for your injuries.

California requires every auto policy to include it unless you rejected it in writing, under Insurance Code § 11580.2.

For a hit-and-run, the claim needs physical contact with the other car and a police report within 24 hours.

If the other driver carried only a small policy, underinsured coverage can make up part of the difference.

Within two years, you must sue the driver, settle, or formally start arbitration with your insurer.

If your own policy is now the one that has to pay, call (888) 713-6653 with your questions.

Insurance Code § 11580.2(a)(1) requires every California auto liability policy to include uninsured motorist coverage at limits no lower than the state's financial responsibility minimums.^[1] Insurers must offer it at the same limits as your liability coverage, up to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident, and you can carry more.

The coverage can be removed or lowered only by a written agreement in the form the statute prescribes, and never below the minimums. If you do not remember signing a rejection, you may well have the coverage, and the declarations page and the signed form will show it.

Uninsured motorist coverage pays for the injuries an at-fault driver would have owed you: medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering, up to your limits. It applies when the at-fault driver had no insurance, when the driver fled and was never identified, and, through underinsured coverage, when the driver's policy was too small.

A driver insured only in Mexico may count as uninsured. Whether a Mexican policy satisfies California law turns on Vehicle Code § 16056(b), covered on our page about crashes with drivers insured in Mexico.

If you and your insurer cannot agree on fault or value, the dispute goes to a single neutral arbitrator under § 11580.2(f), with the ordinary civil discovery rules, rather than to a jury.

Your own insurer owes you a fair evaluation, but it is still paying from its own pocket, so the claim deserves the same preparation as a claim against a stranger's insurer.

When the driver is never identified, § 11580.2(b) adds three requirements before uninsured motorist coverage applies.

• Physical contact. The injury must arise from physical contact between the unknown vehicle and you, or the vehicle you were in.
• A report within 24 hours. The crash must be reported to the city police where it happened, or, outside city limits, to the sheriff or the local California Highway Patrol office.
• A sworn statement within 30 days. You must file a statement under oath with your insurer setting out the facts.

A driver who forces you off the road without touching your car does not meet the contact rule, which is why witnesses and video matter so much in a near-miss crash. Fleeing the scene of an injury crash is a crime under Vehicle Code § 20001, and a felony carrying state prison when the crash causes death or permanent, serious injury.^[2]

A missed 24-hour report can cost the whole uninsured motorist claim, so the report number belongs in your file the day of the crash, even when the injuries seem minor. It is separate from the 10-day DMV report every driver in an injury crash must file, covered on our page about the California SR-1 form.

Under § 11580.2(p), a driver is underinsured when their liability limits are lower than your uninsured motorist limits. The coverage applies only after the at-fault driver's policy has been paid out in full, and it pays up to your limits minus what that policy paid.

If you carry $100,000 in underinsured coverage and the at-fault driver's insurer pays its $30,000 limit, your own coverage can pay up to $70,000 more. If you carry only $30,000, matching the other driver's policy, the underinsured coverage adds nothing.

California does not allow stacking. Under § 11580.2(q), the limits on two cars or two policies cannot be added together. The way to more coverage is a higher limit on the policy itself, which is worth knowing at renewal.

California's minimum liability limits rose to $30,000 and $60,000 for policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2025,^[5] but a serious injury still outruns a minimum policy, and that gap is what underinsured coverage exists to fill. For a driver who had no insurance of their own, the rules run differently, as our page on Proposition 213 and uninsured drivers explains.

When the at-fault driver was using someone else's car with permission, the owner can be liable too, but only up to a cap. Vehicle Code § 17151 limits an owner's liability for a permissive driver to $15,000 for one person and $30,000 for one crash, a figure that has not changed since 1967 and now sits below the minimum insurance limits. The cap does not apply to the owner's own negligence, such as handing the keys to a driver the owner knew was unfit, and a rental company is shielded by the federal Graves Amendment unless it was negligent itself.

A borrowed car with a thin policy is the situation where your own underinsured coverage most often decides how much of the loss gets paid.

Rideshare passengers have their own uninsured motorist coverage through the company, but the amount changed on January 1, 2026. Under Public Utilities Code § 5433 as amended by SB 371, the coverage that protects a passenger while in the car fell from $1,000,000 to $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident.

A passenger hurt by a hit-and-run driver or an uninsured driver during an Uber or Lyft trip now has far less coverage from the company than before, which makes the passenger's own auto policy more important. Our page on California rideshare accident law covers the other insurance periods and the 2027 medical-billing changes.

The change applies only to the rideshare company's coverage; nothing in it reduces what your own policy owes you.

An uninsured motorist claim has its own deadline. Within two years of the crash, one of three things must happen: a lawsuit is filed against the uninsured driver, you and your insurer agree on the amount, or you formally start arbitration with a written demand sent by certified mail, return receipt requested.

When the driver fled and was never found, there is no one to sue, so the arbitration demand is usually the step that preserves the claim. Once arbitration starts, it must be concluded within five years. The statute allows a few excuses, such as an insurer's conduct that led you to miss the deadline, but they are a weak foundation to rely on.

Talking with an adjuster does not stop the clock. A claim that has been open with your insurer for 23 months without a demand is a claim about to expire.

An uninsured motorist claim is worth what the at-fault driver would have owed you, limited by your coverage. That includes your medical expenses, lost wages and earning capacity, and pain and suffering, reduced by any share of fault the arbitrator assigns to you under California's pure comparative fault rule.

Your limits set the ceiling, so the first document to read is the declarations page. A family with several vehicles on one policy has one limit per person, not one per car. Medical payments coverage, if you bought it, pays separately and quickly toward the bills.

An insurer's first evaluation of a UM claim often discounts the injuries the same way a liability carrier would, and the arbitration is where that number gets tested with medical evidence. A second look at the offer, as our page on a second opinion on a California settlement offer describes, applies here too.