Hit by a Driverless Car in California: Who Pays?

A car with nobody in the driver's seat hit you, and now the usual script does not work. There is no license to photograph, no one to apologize or admit fault, and no human whose insurance card you can hold in your hand. This post covers who you actually make a claim against, what the vehicle recorded before it hit you, and which deadlines still run exactly as they always did.

The short version: the legal rules that decide your case are the ordinary ones. What changes is where the evidence lives and who is holding it.

Why this is suddenly a Bay Area question

Driverless service here is no longer confined to a few square miles of San Francisco. On August 14, 2026, the California Public Utilities Commission approved Waymo's Advice Letter 0004 and its supplemental 0004-A, authorizing expansion of its driverless deployment service into additional portions of Northern and Southern California. More vehicles operating over more of the Bay Area means more ordinary intersections where one of these cars is a party to a crash.

There is no driver, so collect different things

Your instincts at the scene are still right: call 911, get medical attention, photograph everything. A few steps are specific to this situation.

• Photograph the whole vehicle, not just the damage. These cars carry visible sensor arrays, company branding, and a license plate. You want all of it in frame.
• Write down the fleet or vehicle number. It is usually printed on the exterior. It identifies the specific car far faster than a plate search.
• Know that a remote operator can be reached. As of July 1, 2026, AB 1777 requires manufacturers operating vehicles without a human operator inside to equip each one with a device letting emergency response officials near the vehicle communicate with a remote human operator, and to staff a dedicated emergency line for those officials. That channel exists for police and fire, not for you, but knowing it exists is why you should wait for officers rather than trying to sort it out yourself.
• Get the police report started. An officer's account of vehicle position, signals, and roadway conditions matters more than usual when the other "driver" will never give a statement.
• Find human witnesses. A passenger inside the car, or a pedestrian on the corner, is the only person who can describe what the vehicle did in the seconds before impact.

Do not assume the company will contact you. Report the crash to your own insurer promptly regardless.

The car was already recording, and the law says so

This is the part that helps you. Vehicle Code § 38750 requires an autonomous vehicle to capture and store its sensor data for at least 30 seconds before a collision, and to preserve that data for three years afterward.

Think about what that means. In an ordinary crash, the fight is over whose memory is right. Here, a detailed technical record of the half minute before impact exists somewhere, and state law obligates the company to keep it. The catch is that it sits on the other side's servers. Preserving it is a step someone has to take deliberately and early, which is one more reason waiting is expensive.

There is a public paper trail too. Under Cal. Code Regs. tit. 13, § 227.48, a manufacturer testing autonomous vehicles must report to the DMV within 10 days any collision on a public road that caused property damage, bodily injury, or death, using form OL 316. The report has to name the people involved and describe how the collision happened. The DMV publishes these collision reports. You may be able to read the company's own written account of your crash without asking them for anything.

Who you are actually claiming against

Two different state agencies sit over these vehicles, and they do different jobs. The DMV issues the permits for testing and deployment of the vehicle itself. The CPUC licenses the passenger service, the part that picks people up for a fare. An operator carrying passengers needs both.

For your purposes, the practical point is § 38750's financial responsibility requirement: to operate on public roads, a manufacturer must hold an instrument of insurance, a surety bond, or proof of self-insurance in the amount of $5,000,000. Compare that to the minimum an ordinary California driver can legally carry, which the DMV puts at $30,000 for injury to one person and $60,000 per accident. The pool of money behind a driverless vehicle is normally not the problem.

That does not make the claim easy. A well-funded corporate defendant with its own data, its own engineers, and its own lawyers is a different opponent than a nervous driver with a $30,000 policy. Expect the same tactics you would see from any insurer, applied with more resources.

What the new law does, and what it does not do

AB 1777 has been widely described as making manufacturers responsible when the autonomous system is engaged. Read the bill and that is not what it says.

What it actually does is operational. From July 1, 2026, manufacturers must answer a dedicated emergency line within 30 seconds with awareness of their vehicles on the road, must let remote operators immobilize or move a vehicle at an official's direction, and must clear a fleet out of an area within two minutes of an emergency geofencing message from local officials. It also lets a peace officer issue a "notice of autonomous vehicle noncompliance" for an apparent Vehicle Code violation by a car in autonomous mode, which the manufacturer must forward to the DMV within 72 hours.

That last piece is useful evidence, with a limit written into the statute: issuing the notice does not create a presumption that the vehicle is unsafe. Neither § 38750 nor AB 1777 sets out who bears liability when the system is driving. That question is still answered by ordinary negligence and product liability principles, applied to a defendant that happens to be a company rather than a person.

What this means in California

The deadlines are the familiar ones, and they are unforgiving.

• Two years. Under CCP § 335.1, a personal injury claim generally must be filed within two years of the injury. A driverless defendant does not extend that.
• Six months. If a public entity is in the mix, a city vehicle, a public bus, a dangerous condition in the roadway, a formal government claim is usually due within six months. That deadline arrives long before the two-year one.
• Pure comparative negligence. California reduces your recovery by your share of fault rather than barring it. Expect the argument that you stepped out, braked late, or drifted. The vehicle's own 30 seconds of sensor data is often the best answer to it.

Practical next steps

Get treated and keep treating consistently, because a gap in your records will be used against you no matter who or what hit you. Save every photograph and the fleet number. Request the police report. Note the date of the crash, since the DMV collision report should surface within weeks. Do not give a recorded statement or sign a release while you are still being treated, and be as careful with the company's representative as you would be with any adjuster. Above all, move on preserving that sensor data early, because it is the one piece of evidence that can settle the fault question outright and it is not in your possession. If you want a read on where you stand, a free consultation costs nothing and there is no fee unless there is a recovery.