A ride requested near the town center, a pickup on Central Avenue, or a drop-off after a campus event can fall into more than one official coverage period under California’s transportation-network company statute. Public Utilities Code section 5433, as amended by 2025 legislation and effective January 1, 2026, is the current text. The official CPUC TNC insurance page is a companion to that section. The period that matters is the period the driver and the passenger were in at the moment of the wreck, not a general idea of being out on an app.
From the moment a ride request is accepted until the ride is complete, the official section requires primary coverage of one million dollars covering death, bodily harm, and property loss. Complete, in that setting, is the later of the platform marking the ride complete or the ride itself being complete. That $1,000,000 figure is a statutory primary amount for that accepted-ride period. It is not the California ordinary auto floor, and it is not a promise about what a particular wreck is worth.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is also addressed in the same section, and it has its own window. Starting when a passenger gets in and lasting until that passenger gets out, the official text requires uninsured and underinsured coverage of sixty thousand dollars for each injured person and three hundred thousand dollars for each incident. That coverage is primary, and it is solely the TNC’s obligation under the terms of the section. A wreck on the way to a pickup, before a passenger has entered, is not automatically inside that passenger-entry window, even if a ride request has already been accepted.
A different set of figures applies when the driver is signed in and waiting for a new ride request, and also after a trip until the driver either accepts a new request or logs off. In that waiting or post-trip window, the official section requires primary limits of at least fifty thousand dollars for death or injury of one person, one hundred thousand dollars when more than one person is hurt or killed, and $30,000 for property damage, plus TNC excess coverage of at least $200,000 per occurrence. Those waiting-period figures are not the same as the $1,000,000 accepted-ride primary amount, and they are not the same as the $60,000 / $300,000 passenger uninsured figures.
The official section also says that the required coverage shall not hinge on a first denial issued by a personal auto policy. If the driver’s TNC insurance lapses or ceases to exist, the TNC is to provide the required coverage starting at the first dollar of that claim. Those two sentences matter when an early letter tells a rider to look only to the driver’s personal auto policy, or when a driver’s TNC policy appears to have lapsed. Read the current statute and the CPUC page against that letter.
A TNC wreck is still a California civil claim. Shared fault can reduce a recovery. Several liability for non-economic damages is still addressed in Civil Code section 1431.2. The two-year clock in Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 still runs, and a public-entity theory can still put a six-month written claim on the date list. TNC coverage questions do not pause those clocks, and they do not choose the courthouse. Obtain the official crash report from the department that handled the wreck, and send an SR-1 when Vehicle Code section 16000 requires it.
Write down the time of the request, the time of acceptance, the time the passenger entered, the time of the wreck, and the time the passenger exited or would have exited. Save the app receipt, the trip map, and any in-app messages. Those details are what place the wreck in an accepted-ride window, a passenger-inside window, or a waiting or post-trip window. A later coverage letter that skips those times is harder to test against section 5433. If more than one rider was in the car, write down who was in the vehicle and who was still waiting to be picked up.
A driver who lives in Canyon Crest may also have a personal auto policy with its own exclusions for TNC work. That personal policy is not the statutory TNC coverage, and a denial under a personal policy does not, under the official section, have to happen before the required TNC coverage applies. A passenger, a pedestrian struck by the TNC vehicle, or another driver in the wreck may each have a different path into that coverage. Write down each person’s role, and keep each later letter with the trip times.
If you were the passenger, also save the fare confirmation and any later in-app support notes. If you were a pedestrian or another driver, you may not have the app receipt, so the crash report, any witness names, and the time of day become even more important. Those details still have to be read against the official periods in section 5433. A platform message that a trip was canceled, or that a driver had already logged off, can matter to which official figures apply.
Proposition 213 in Civil Code section 3333.4 and the ordinary auto floors in Vehicle Code section 16056 can still appear in a TNC wreck, especially when a personal auto policy or an uninsured private driver is also in the story. They do not replace section 5433 for the periods that section covers. If the wreck happened in Riverside County, a later civil filing is often a Riverside Superior Court matter, subject to the current assignment order. Living in Canyon Crest, or requesting the ride there, does not move a wreck that occurred in another county. Treat this as a local briefing. Get advice on your own facts rather than relying on this briefing alone.