Five months into California's SB 371 rollout, the doctrine is settling into shape. The statute, effective January 1, 2026, dropped the required uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage during the passenger portion of a rideshare trip from $1 million to $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident, a roughly 94% reduction. The $1 million third-party liability policy that applies when the rideshare driver is at fault remains intact.
For practitioners building rideshare-passenger cases against uninsured or underinsured at-fault drivers, the new floor changes the case theory at intake. The old model treated rideshare cases as fully insured, with a million-dollar UM/UIM backstop that absorbed all but the most catastrophic injuries. The new model has a coverage cliff at $60,000 that has to be planned around in every case.
The three coverage layers, after SB 371
The structure remains the same in shape, but the per-layer math is different. Layer one is the rideshare driver's personal policy, which only applies if the app is off. Layer two is the rideshare company's contingent liability policy when the app is on but no ride has been accepted, sitting at $50,000 per person, $100,000 per incident, and $30,000 property damage. Layer three is the active-ride policy, which holds a $1 million liability ceiling but only $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident in UM/UIM after SB 371.
For a passenger injured during an active ride by an at-fault driver, the case theory depends on what the at-fault driver's policy looks like. If the at-fault driver has California minimums, the passenger is staring at a stack of relatively low policies layered against medical bills that, in a serious-injury case, often clear $200,000 before discovery closes.
What the new floor forces on case selection
The change is not really about cases worth $50,000. Those continue to work. The change is about cases worth $250,000 to $500,000 in soft-tissue plus surgery, where the at-fault driver carries minimums and the rideshare UM/UIM used to absorb the gap. Under the old framework, those cases settled inside policy limits with little contention. Under SB 371, the passenger's recovery is capped well below treatment cost, and the firm has to think harder about whether to take the case at all.
A few intake-level filters have already shown up in the larger California rideshare practices:
- At-fault driver coverage status, pulled before signing if at all possible. Where the at-fault driver carries a real policy, the SB 371 floor matters less.
- Passenger's own UM/UIM, which now becomes the most important backstop in cases where the at-fault driver is uninsured. Stacking on the passenger's own household policies, where state law permits, is a primary case-building tool.
- App-status documentation at the moment of crash. Whether the trip was active versus en-route-to-pickup determines which rideshare layer applies, and the difference between $60,000 and $1 million can turn on a thirty-second app-state distinction.
The app-status problem
Rideshare cases have always turned on app status, but SB 371 raised the stakes. Defense counsel for rideshare companies are pressing harder on whether the app was technically in the "active ride" state at the moment of impact, because the coverage difference between active ride and pre-pickup phase is now far larger than the per-layer liability difference.
For plaintiff firms, the discovery sequence has shifted. The first preservation letter goes to the rideshare company demanding driver app logs and GPS data for the 30 minutes surrounding the crash. The second goes to the driver's personal carrier for any independent dash-cam or telematics. Where the discovery shows an app-status transition within seconds of impact, the case becomes a coverage fight before it becomes a liability fight.
Stacking and the household-policy backstop
California permits inter-policy stacking under most household auto policies for UM/UIM. With the rideshare UM/UIM capped at $60,000, the passenger's own household stack often becomes the largest available pool. Firms working rideshare passenger cases without first pulling the household policy declarations are leaving recovery on the table.
The intake checklist now reads more like a coverage-counsel intake than a traditional auto intake. The data points that matter are: rideshare app status, at-fault driver coverage status, passenger household policies and stacking eligibility, MedPay across all available policies, and any commercial coverage if the at-fault driver was working at the time.
The ballot initiative wildcard
Uber filed a proposed ballot initiative for November 2026 that, if passed, would impose additional restrictions on injured riders' ability to recover. Whatever the merits, practitioners with rideshare cases in their pipelines should plan for the possibility of further coverage compression after the November vote. Cases worth pushing toward settlement before the election are the ones where coverage is already maxed out at the SB 371 floor and further constraints would not change the outcome.
Where this leaves case building
The honest read on SB 371 is that it transferred risk from the rideshare companies to injured passengers and their household insurers. The case-building response is to treat every rideshare passenger case as a coverage analysis first, a liability analysis second. The firms that have adjusted intake to that order are the ones still taking these cases at volume. Firms still running rideshare intakes on the old assumption that a $1 million UM/UIM backstop sits behind every case have been quietly turning down matters that would have been profitable last year.
For broader coverage of California auto practice and related auto-accidents developments, this week's industry-news wrap covers the New Jersey PIP ruling and Missouri's revised expert standard. Firms building or rebuilding rideshare intake workflows can find related throughput notes in our practice-operations coverage.