Hit by an Uninsured Driver in California? Your Own Policy May Be the Claim

There is a particular moment in a California injury case that clients find hard to believe: the other driver caused the crash, the police report says so, and there is no insurance to pay for it.

It is not rare. It is common enough that your own policy almost certainly contains the answer.

Uninsured motorist coverage, in one paragraph

Uninsured motorist (UM) coverage is part of your own auto policy. It pays for injuries caused by a driver who has no liability insurance, whose insurer denies coverage or goes insolvent, or who fled the scene in a qualifying hit-and-run. You claim against your own insurance company, but the claim is still built on the other driver’s fault — you have to prove they caused the crash exactly as you would have if they were insured.

Insurers in California must offer UM coverage, but you are allowed to reject it in writing. A great many people have rejected it and do not remember doing so. It is worth looking at your declarations page today rather than after a crash.

The 2025 change that made this more important, not less

Effective January 1, 2025, California’s minimum liability limits rose from $15,000 / $30,000 / $5,000 to $30,000 per person / $60,000 per accident / $15,000 property damage, under SB 1107. The same law schedules another increase on January 1, 2035, to $50,000 / $100,000 / $25,000.

That sounds like good news, and it is. It is also not enough. A single ambulance ride, an emergency room visit, imaging, and a short course of physical therapy can approach or exceed $30,000 on its own, before anything is paid for lost income or for the injury itself. A driver carrying exactly the legal minimum is still, in practice, underinsured for any serious collision.

Which is why the second coverage matters as much as the first.

Underinsured motorist coverage, and the offset nobody explains

Underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage applies when the at-fault driver has insurance but not enough to cover your losses.

Here is the part that surprises almost everyone, and the part that determines whether your coverage is worth anything: California UIM is offset coverage, not additional coverage. Your UIM limit is reduced by whatever the at-fault driver’s liability insurance pays.

Your UIM limit	Their liability pays	What UIM adds
$30,000	$30,000	$0
$50,000	$30,000	up to $20,000
$100,000	$30,000	up to $70,000
$250,000	$30,000	up to $220,000

The practical consequence: if your UIM limit is equal to or lower than the other driver’s liability limit, your UIM coverage will pay nothing at all. Carrying $30,000 in UIM in a state with $30,000 minimums buys you a coverage line on your declarations page that can never pay out against a minimally insured driver.

This is the single most useful thing on this page, and it costs nothing to act on. Look at your UM/UIM limits. If they are at the state minimum, raising them is typically one of the least expensive changes available on an auto policy, precisely because it only pays when someone else has already failed to carry enough.

Hit-and-run: the physical contact requirement

A hit-and-run driver can count as uninsured, but California attaches conditions that catch people out.

Under Insurance Code section 11580.2(b), where the vehicle is unidentified, there generally must have been actual physical contact between that vehicle and you or your car. A “phantom vehicle” that ran you off the road without touching you is, under the statute, a much harder claim.

There are also two hard reporting steps:

• Report to law enforcement within 24 hours.
• File a statement under oath with your insurer within 30 days. The statute is specific that it is sworn, not a casual notification.

Miss those and the insurer has a straightforward defense that has nothing to do with the merits of your injuries.

The two-year deadline almost nobody is told about

This is where good UM claims die.

Insurance Code section 11580.2(i) provides that no cause of action accrues under a UM provision unless, within two years of the date of the accident, one of the following has happened:

1. suit for bodily injury has been filed against the uninsured motorist, or
2. an agreement as to the amount due under the policy has been concluded, or
3. the insured has formally instituted arbitration proceedings — which the statute defines as notifying the insurer in writing, sent by certified mail, return receipt requested.

Read that again with a claim in mind. Two years of cooperative, apparently productive back-and-forth with your own insurance company satisfies none of those three things. Sending records is not filing suit. Discussing numbers is not a concluded agreement. Saying you would like to arbitrate is not formally instituting arbitration.

Your insurer is not obliged to remind you. Claims that were worth real money have expired inside a friendly negotiation.

It is your insurer — which cuts both ways

A UM claim is a first-party claim: you against your own insurance company. Two things follow.

The uncomfortable one is that the company you have paid premiums to is now the party disputing how hurt you are. People are routinely unprepared for that shift in tone.

The useful one is that your insurer owes you a duty of good faith and fair dealing that a stranger’s insurer does not. An unreasonable denial or delay on a first-party claim carries exposure that a third-party liability insurer does not face. That duty is real leverage, and it is worth having someone who uses it.

Most UM disputes are resolved through arbitration rather than a jury trial, under the arbitration provisions the statute contemplates.

This is not a theoretical problem

Singh Law HQ recovered $100,000 for a client struck by an uninsured driver who was under the influence. Because the at-fault driver carried no insurance, the recovery came through our client’s own uninsured motorist coverage. The firm has handled multiple six-figure UM and UIM claims involving impaired drivers — which is also the clearest argument we can make for carrying more of this coverage than the minimum. That result and others are on our case results page.

Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Every case is different and results depend on the specific facts and circumstances of each matter.

What to do

1. Find your declarations page and locate “UM” or “UMBI.” If it says “rejected,” you have no coverage. If it shows state-minimum limits, understand what the offset means.
2. After a crash with an uninsured or fleeing driver, report to police within 24 hours.
3. Notify your own insurer promptly, and within 30 days if the driver is unidentified.
4. Write down the accident date and treat two years as a hard wall under section 11580.2(i).
5. Do not assume the negotiation is protecting the deadline. It is not.

Singh Law HQ handles uninsured and underinsured motorist claims across Riverside and the Inland Empire and throughout California, in English, Spanish, Punjabi, and Hindi. The consultation is free.