Safer Streets for Everyone, a nonprofit organization advocating for road safety, co-sponsored the legislation. The group\u2019s founder and executive director, Damian Kevitt, is a cyclist who was hit by a car and lost his leg. He testified before the committee, citing a couple of studies<\/a> that show drivers improved their behavior \u2014 including reducing their use of mobile phones<\/a> \u2014 while behind the wheel when financial rewards were involved.<\/p>\n Both studies were backed by the insurance industry. None of the proponents who testified recently before two Senate committees advanced the bill mentioned any independent studies around whether telematics has helped improve safety.<\/p>\n Other supporters of the bill include several road-safety coalitions and bicycle associations from around the state.<\/p>\n Insurance department\u2019s concerns<\/p>\n The state\u2019s insurance department is opposed to the bill, saying the legislation is not compatible with California insurance law, Proposition 103.<\/p>\n The law came out of a ballot proposition written by Harvey Rosenfield, the founder of consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, in response to rising car and home insurance premiums almost four decades ago.<\/p>\n It was approved by 51% of the state\u2019s voters in 1988 and includes a mandate for insurance companies to give \u201cgood drivers\u201d 20% discounts. (Some drivers also receive discounts for low mileage \u2014 it\u2019s a form of monitoring that\u2019s OK under Prop. 103 because miles driven is an allowed factor in rate-setting.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe bill creates broad liability loopholes, dilutes regulator oversight, and allows insurance companies to shift core regulatory responsibilities to unregulated third-party telematics vendors, among other concerns,\u201d wrote Josephine Figueroa, deputy insurance commissioner and legislative director for the department, to Sen. Steve Padilla<\/a>, chairperson of the Senate insurance committee, on June 20.<\/p>\n Figueroa wrote that the bill contains vague language about how insurance companies are supposed to do \u201cdue diligence\u201d around third-party telematics providers, and using telematics data as part of drivers\u2019 records. She said the insurance department has documented cases \u201cwhere facially neutral criteria produce disparate impacts, such as the use of census-tract voter registration rates as a proxy for race or citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, she said \u201cconsumer savings also remain generally unproven and varied.\u201d She cited data<\/a> from the Maryland Insurance Administration, which showed that in 2023, 31% of that state\u2019s drivers enrolled in their insurers\u2019 telematics program saw their rates drop; 24% actually experienced an increase; and 45% saw no change in their premiums.<\/p>\n Maryland\u2019s research also showed that the telematics systems collected a lot of data that included trip route, days driven, G-force, unsafe following, aggressive turning and many more driver behaviors. Most insurers outsourced the collection of that data to third parties.<\/p>\n California\u2019s Senate insurance committee passed the bill four days after Figueroa\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n The insurance department is meeting with McKinnor\u2019s staff about its concerns, according to Michael Soller, spokesperson for the department. McKinnor and her staff would not answer CalMatters\u2019 questions about the bill.<\/p>\n Some of the insurance department\u2019s concerns about the legislation align with those of Consumer Watchdog.<\/p>\n \u201cIn California, auto insurance has to be rated in a driver\u2019s actual driving history, not the product of an unverified algorithm or (artificial intelligence) system predicting future driving,\u201d said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, in testimony before the Senate insurance committee.<\/p>\n In an interview with CalMatters, Balber wondered why the legislation \u2014 a \u201cgut-and-amend,\u201d a bill that has been substantially reworked or rewritten, has missed the introduction deadline and is meant to be fast-tracked, often because it\u2019s controversial \u2014 is bypassing the typical hearing process. The new language was submitted to the Senate June 10; Balber said her group had less than a week\u2019s notice that it was coming up for discussion.<\/p>\n That worry, too, is in line with that of the insurance department. Figueroa wrote in her letter to Padilla that she was concerned that the bill, as gutted and amended, contains language the department had reviewed and expressed reservations about several months ago.<\/p>\n The list of the bill\u2019s supporters includes insurance industry groups that have long pushed for telematics use in California. One group in particular, the Personal Insurance Federation of California, has given about $1,000 worth of dinner and travel to McKinnor several times over the past few years, according to CalMatters\u2019 Digital Democracy database<\/a>. She has also received campaign contributions from the group, as well as other insurance industry groups and employees, totaling $38,000 since 2022, state campaign finance records show.<\/p>\n Padilla, a Democrat from the San Diego area who chairs the Senate insurance committee, was unavailable to respond to CalMatters\u2019 questions about the concerns the insurance department raised in the letter it sent him, spokesperson Cameron Sutherland said.<\/p>\n Padilla also is on the Senate Standing Committee on Privacy, Digital Technologies and Consumer Protection, which passed the bill a few days after the insurance committee did and referred it to the appropriations committee.<\/p>\n Padilla has received about the same amount of campaign contributions from the insurance industry since 2022, according to campaign finance records.<\/p>\n The insurance department sent the chairperson of the privacy committee, Sen. Christopher Cabaldon<\/a>, a Democrat from Napa, a similar letter with its concerns about the bill, according to Soller. Cabaldon\u2019s office did not immediately respond to CalMatters\u2019 request to talk about the letter.<\/p>\n Cabaldon showed strong support for the bill, saying during his committee hearing<\/a> that consumers should have the choice to use their driving data how they want and that he believed in the technology\u2019s potential. He has also received campaign contributions from the insurance industry \u2014 about $27,000 going back to when he ran for the state Assembly in 2008, campaign finance records show.<\/p>\n The numbers, or lack thereof<\/p>\n California has some of the highest rates for full auto insurance coverage in the nation, according to at least one analysis<\/a>, by MarketWatch, a news publication with an arm that publishes commerce guides. Another analysis<\/a>, by insurance-comparison site Insurify, says California\u2019s car insurance rates have been rising for the past couple of years and are projected to increase 1% this year.<\/p>\n Maryland\u2019s research on the effects of telematics is the first by a state insurance regulator, according to Consumer Federation of America, a national association of consumer nonprofit organizations. The group is urging other state regulators to follow suit.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t trust companies to do this without oversight,\u201d Michael DeLong, research and advocacy associate for the group, told CalMatters. He said companies can collect a lot of information about drivers and use it to make money; an example of that is a recent settlement<\/a> between the California Justice Department and General Motors, penalizing the automaker for selling driver data associated with its OnStar emergency roadside and navigation service.<\/p>\n DeLong said the group plans to write a letter criticizing AB 311.<\/p>\n At least one other independent survey, by Consumer Reports<\/a> in 2024, has shown that telematics can help reduce drivers\u2019 premiums. The survey found a median annual savings of $120 \u2014 including higher savings for Black and Latino drivers than for white and Asian drivers \u2014 but also found that some drivers\u2019 insurance costs rose.<\/p>\n Consumer and privacy advocates,\u00a0 including ACLU California Action, Consumer Federation of California and TechEquity Action, worry that some drivers will feel like they have no choice but to give up their privacy in exchange for possibly saving money. In doing so, they could also open themselves up to bias depending on where they live, work and drive.<\/p>\n The bill \u201cwould authorize an opaque surveillance pricing infrastructure for a product Californians are legally required to purchase,\u201d Becca Cramer, speaking for Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, told both the Senate insurance committee and privacy committee. \u201cCalifornians have a constitutional right to privacy and not have to choose between exercising that right and affording a mandatory product.\u201d<\/p>\n Cramer also cited the Consumer Reports survey and said telematics companies score drivers based on \u201cfactors that correlate strongly with race and income.\u201d<\/p>\n This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Other witnesses, also clearly emotional, expressed support for the bill as they carried enlarged photos of the loved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-394957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cars](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/RS51744_RichmondSanRafaelBridge-12-KQED.jpg\")
Cars on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge driving across the San Francisco Bay, as seen from northern Point San Quentin in San Quentin on Sept. 23, 2021. (Joyce Tsai\/KQED)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-84776357-e1533663544615.jpg\")
People wait in line outside of the DMV in Los Angeles. (Robyn Beck\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/EV-Carpool_GettyImages-2234597020.jpg\")
A driver rides the carpool lane in a Tesla on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. (Sarah Reingewirtz\/MediaNews Group\/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/20251216_REVOKE-OF-COMMERCIAL-DRIVERS-LICENSES_DECEMBER_GH-9-KQED.jpg\")
The view from inside Amarjit Singh\u2019s truck in Livermore, on Dec. 16, 2025. (Gustavo Hernandez\/KQED)<\/p>\n