What happened: California raised insurance minimums for car-sharing platforms while capping their previously uncapped vicarious liability
Who's involved: Personal vehicle sharing programs, vehicle owners, and their auto insurers
What's at stake: New minimum floors of $250,000/$500,000/$100,000, replacing $45,000/$90,000/$15,000 - but platform liability is no longer open-ended
Why it matters: Underwriters and claims teams face higher coverage floors but a clearer, bounded liability framework
Where it stands: Signed into law September 27, 2026
The liability rules for car-sharing platforms in California just changed in two directions at once.
Assembly Bill 2361, signed into law on September 27, raises the minimum insurance that personal vehicle sharing programs must carry - but also narrows the liability they assume from open-ended to capped. The result is a framework that costs more on paper but gives platforms, carriers, and vehicle owners cleaner boundaries to work with.
Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco authored the bill, which amends Insurance Code section 11580.24 and was chaptered as Chapter 601 of the 2026 session.
Under the old law, platforms assumed "all liability of the owner" and were "considered the owner of the vehicle for all purposes" when a shared driver was behind the wheel. The insurance minimums backing that exposure were $45,000 for bodily injury or death per person, $90,000 for all persons, and $15,000 for property damage.
AB 2361 replaces those minimums with $250,000, $500,000, and $100,000 respectively - more than five times the old floors. But the trade-off is significant: the platform no longer assumes all liability and is no longer deemed the vehicle's owner. Instead, it assumes liability for bodily injury or property damage to injured third parties, in amounts stated in the sharing agreement, subject to the new minimums as a floor.
For coverage counsel, that shift from uncapped to capped changes how disputes over excess exposure get resolved.
The bill introduces a new exception: if the vehicle owner acts in concert with a shared driver who fails to return the vehicle under the program agreement, the platform's liability obligations do not apply. Collusion voids the platform's duty.
Everything else in the existing framework holds. The platform must still defend and indemnify the owner if named in a lawsuit during a sharing period. The owner's personal auto insurer can still exclude coverage while the car is shared. And no policy can be canceled solely because the vehicle is listed on a sharing platform.
For underwriters pricing sharing-platform risk in California, the minimums just jumped more than fivefold. That additional capacity cost will flow into platform fees, reinsurance, or carrier pricing models. But bounded liability may simplify reserving - claims teams now work against defined dollar thresholds rather than open-ended owner-equivalent exposure.
AB 2361 was signed into law and filed with the California Secretary of State on September 27, 2026. The full chaptered text is publicly available through the California Legislative Information website.
