Driving data bill stalls…again

A bill that would have allowed drivers to opt in to usage-based insurance was held under submission by the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month, leaving California as the only state not to allow car insurance rates based on driving data

AB 311, the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act of 2026, by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) would have allowed California drivers to opt in to usage-based insurance programs that use telematics to collect driving data and offer discounts for safe driving. McKinnor originally introduced the measure as AB 1883, also the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act of 2026, earlier this year, but after cancelling the bill’s first hearing in the Assembly reintroduced the text in the Senate with a gut-and-amend of AB 311.

The Committee’s decision effectively kills the bill for the remainder of the year.

“We were surprised; we didn’t expect that,” said Damian Kevitt, founder of Streets Are For Everyone (SAFE), the bill’s sponsor. “We don’t know exactly what happened; maybe someone does, but I don’t know what happened behind the scenes.”

According to Senator Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks), vice chair of the Senate Insurance Committee, the bill was likely held under submission due to the estimated fiscal cost by the California Department of Insurance (CDI).

“CDI estimates costs of $2.03 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026-27, $3.90 million in FY 2027-28, and $3.62 million in FY 2028-29 and ongoing for an additional 14 positions,” the Senate Appropriations Committee analysis reads. “CDI notes the bill creates additional costs without a revenue mechanism, which would put additional pressure on its Fees and License and Proposition 103 sub-accounts.”

CDI opposes the bill. In an email to Capitol Weekly, CDI senior deputy press secretary Allison Hensley cited concerns that AB 311 “would have significantly weakened the consumer protection and insurer accountability framework established by voters nearly 40 years ago with Proposition 103.”

Prop. 103 was passed by voters in 1988 and forms the basis for insurance regulation in California.

“We don’t know exactly what happened; maybe someone does, but I don’t know what happened behind the scenes.”

“The bill would have allowed insurers to potentially avoid responsibility to their customers for privacy violations and other illegal practices by third-party telematics data providers who fall outside the Department’s oversight,” the email read.

According to Allison Adey, a legislative advocate for the Personal Insurance Federation of California (PFIC), they and other supporters of the bill believed it would make its way to the Senate floor, where they would introduce amendments to address CDI’s concerns.

“There had been a lot of conversations over summer recess with the Department of Insurance trying to make sure that their concerns got addressed,” Adey said. “I think we were getting very, very close to that.”

Niello said the need for future amendments led to him abstaining during AB 311’s hearing in the Senate Insurance Committee. Despite supporting the bill in concept, the need for the bill to return to the Assembly and further amendments meant he would likely abstain on a floor vote as well.

According to Adey, negotiations with CDI focused on the bill working with Prop. 103, “that is the North Star for how insurance regulation works in California.”

The election of a new Insurance Commissioner later this year is unlikely to help any future telematics bill if democrat Jane Kim is elected.

“At this point, I’m skeptical; I would love to see more information,” Kim said in an interview. “But I think the biggest concern that the industry will have trouble overcoming the hurdle on is the concerns around data collection generally.”

The campaign of Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), who is running against Kim for Insurance Commissioner, did not respond to a request for comment.

Consumer Watchdog, a group founded by Proposition 103 author Harvey Rosenfield, opposed the bill as the amendments introduced during the committee process did not address their major privacy concerns, according to executive director Carmen Balber.

“While you could clearly see some of those amendments were trying to address the serious concerns insurance consumer advocates and privacy advocates were raising, they really failed to get at the heart of the problem,” Balber said.

According to Kevitt, the bill would offer protections against specific location data being collected and sold by telematics companies; however, Balber says the bill didn’t do enough to prevent selling de-identified data that could be re-identified by data brokers.

Balber says the central feature of Proposition 103 is to make sure insurance rates are fair and transparent.

“Prop 103 required companies to make everything that goes into a rate public, and telematics scores are by nature private and eliminate that promise,” Balber said. “If lawmakers want to take away the ability of consumers to know what’s going into their insurance rate, they need to take that to the voters.”

However, Kevitt said he believed the bill could be passed by a two-thirds vote in the legislature by tying telematics into drivers’ motor vehicle record established by Prop. 103.

“There is no definition of what the motor vehicle record includes,” Kevitt said. “Prop. 103 was written before telematics was ever even a thing.”

Kevitt says he’s excited about SAFE’s involvement with AB 311 because it is a road safety bill that doesn’t punish drivers.

“It incentivizes you to put your phone down and stop texting and driving; it incentivizes you to put a little more space between you and the car in front of you so you don’t have to do hard braking,” Kevitt said. “It incentivizes you to slow it down a little bit because you’re literally getting paid to drive safer.”

The office of Assemblymember McKinnor did not reply to a request for comment.