If an Allstate driver caused your crash, you can file straight against their policy. No Allstate policy required. No deductible either. Claiming on your own Allstate collision coverage is a different process with a different cost to you. California’s at-fault rules decide which of the two you are in.
Whose Policy Pays After a California Crash?
The at-fault driver’s policy pays. California is not a no-fault state, so your own insurer does not automatically cover injuries someone else caused. If Allstate insures the driver who hit you, your claim goes to Allstate.
That is a third-party claim, meaning a claim against another person’s policy rather than your own. You do not have to be an Allstate customer to file one. Allstate’s claims page lists a separate number for non-customers, 800-255-7828. You can also open the claim through your own insurer and let them chase Allstate for the money. Allstate describes that same arrangement from the other side on its auto claims page, telling its own customers they may file through the other driver’s insurance.
A few situations still send you to your own policy. A hit and run, an uninsured driver, or a crash you caused. How fault gets determined decides which of the two you are in, and it is not always obvious at the scene.
Your Deductible Only Applies to Your Own Coverage
A deductible only comes out when you claim on your own collision coverage. File a third-party claim against the at-fault driver’s Allstate policy and no deductible applies at all.
Claiming on your own coverage works differently. You pay the deductible up front and then wait. Allstate says it will try to recover that deductible from the other driver’s insurer if its investigation determines you were not at fault. The process is called subrogation. It can run for months, and the full amount does not always come back.
Going through your own collision coverage can be the faster way to get the car fixed when fault is being argued about. Just go in knowing what it costs you in the meantime.
Notify Allstate, Then File Your California Reports
Open a claim with Allstate early. If Allstate is your own insurer, your policy requires prompt notice, and a late report hands the company a reason to question the claim later. If you are claiming against Allstate’s insured, no Allstate policy binds you, but nothing moves until a claim number exists and an adjuster is assigned. Keep that first call to the basic facts.
California then adds two reporting duties that have nothing to do with any insurer. The first is the SR-1. Vehicle Code 16000 requires it within 10 days after a crash on a street or highway that injures or kills anyone, or that causes more than $1,000 in property damage to any one person. File it through the DMV’s accident reporting page. The section carves out a narrow exception for crashes involving government-owned or government-leased vehicles. Under Vehicle Code 16004, the DMV is required to suspend the license of a driver who does not file one.
The second is faster. Vehicle Code 20008 requires a written report to the California Highway Patrol, or to city police if the crash happened inside a city. It is due within 24 hours when someone is injured or killed. If officers wrote a report at the scene, ask that agency what still has to come from you.
Can Allstate Raise Your Rates After a Crash You Did Not Cause?
Not on your driving record, no. Under Proposition 103, your driving safety record is the most heavily weighted factor in what you pay for auto insurance (Insurance Code 1861.02). The regulations that implement it let an insurer count an accident against that record only if it determines you were principally at fault.
Your premium can still move for reasons that have nothing to do with your crash, like an approved rate filing or a change in what claims cost generally. What Allstate cannot do is put an accident you did not principally cause onto your record and charge you for it.
The threshold is specific. Title 10, section 2632.13 of the California Code of Regulations says an insurer cannot call you principally at fault unless your actions or omissions were at least 51 percent of the legal cause. The crash also has to have caused injury, death, or more than $1,000 in damage.
The regulation then builds in presumptions that run in your favor. If your car was lawfully parked, or you were struck from behind and were not convicted of a moving violation in connection with the crash, you are presumed not principally at fault. The insurer can rebut that presumption. It just has to do the work. Four more presumptions sit in the same subsection. They cover hit and run, as long as you reported the crash to authorities within a reasonable time. They also cover crashes where the other driver was the one convicted, contact with animals, birds, or falling objects, and solo crashes caused by a hazard you could not reasonably have avoided.
Accident Forgiveness Is Not Sold in California
You cannot buy accident forgiveness in California. Under Proposition 103, the California Department of Insurance does not permit insurers to offer accident forgiveness programs in California auto policies. No California driver has that coverage, whatever a national advertisement says.
California prosecutors have already pushed Allstate on this point. In November 2016 the San Diego County District Attorney’s Consumer Protection Unit, working with the Riverside and Los Angeles District Attorneys, settled a false advertising action against Allstate. The allegation was that Allstate’s national accident forgiveness television campaign did not adequately disclose that the program is unavailable in California. Allstate itself estimated the campaign reached 90 percent of California households. Allstate paid $600,000 and agreed to an injunction requiring clear and conspicuous disclosure that such programs are not available in every state. The judgment was entered without any admission of liability.
Allstate’s national claims pages still reference accident forgiveness. It does not apply to a California policy.
How to File a Car Accident Claim With Allstate
Allstate customers file through My Account or the Allstate mobile app, and everyone else calls 800-255-7828. Document the damage, choose your own shop, and keep treating. The steps run in this order for a reason, and the first one is not calling a lawyer.
- Gather what the adjuster will ask for. Allstate’s own list covers contact and insurance details for everyone involved, vehicle information, photos of the damage and the scene, the location and time, the police report or report number, the names of the responding officers, and dash cam footage if you have it. Start with what you have. You can add the rest later.
- Open the claim. Allstate customers file through My Account or the Allstate mobile app. If you are not an Allstate customer and you are claiming against their insured, call 800-255-7828.
- Get the damage documented. Allstate may invite you to submit photos for a virtual inspection and write the estimate from those. The car can also be inspected in person. A photo estimate only captures what the camera can see, so damage hiding behind a fender turns into a supplement once a shop opens the car up.
- Choose your repair shop. The Good Hands Repair Network is optional. Allstate’s own auto claims page says you are free to choose any repair shop, and California Insurance Code 758.5 bars any insurer from requiring a specific one.
- Keep treating, and keep the records. Medical bills, mileage to appointments, days missed at work. A claim is worth what you can document, and a gap in treatment is something an adjuster can point at.
What an Allstate First Offer Actually Covers
A first offer covers what is in the claim file the day it is written. In practice that means the repair estimate plus whatever medical bills Allstate has received so far.
What it leaves out is usually the expensive part. Treatment you have not had yet. Income you will lose while you recover. Pain and suffering, which arrives with no invoice attached to it. An offer can look reasonable next to the bills stacked on your kitchen table and still fall well short of what the claim is worth.
You are not required to accept it. Turning down an offer does not close the claim either. Once you do agree on a settlement figure, California’s fair claims regulations require the insurer to tender payment immediately. The outside limit is 30 calendar days after it accepts the claim and receives your signed release. Read that release first. Signing one almost always ends the claim, including for injuries that surface afterward.
Deadlines, and What You Say to the Adjuster
You generally have two years to file a personal injury lawsuit in California and three years for property damage. Code of Civil Procedure 335.1 sets the injury deadline. It runs from the date of the crash. A pending claim does not extend it. There is more on how the statute of limitations works, including the much shorter deadlines that apply when a public entity is involved.
You are also not required to give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement. The request usually comes early, well before anyone knows how serious the injuries are. Do not guess at speed or distance. Do not say you feel fine when you have not been examined. Here is a longer list of what not to tell an insurance company.
Your own policy is different. If you claim on your own Allstate coverage, the cooperation clause in that policy usually does require you to give a statement. And if a demand has already gone to Allstate with nothing coming back, there are rules about how long an insurer can take to respond.
Do You Need a Lawyer for an Allstate Claim?
For a simple property damage claim, probably not. If your parked car got hit, nobody was injured, and Allstate accepted fault, the rest is paperwork and a repair appointment.
It changes when fault is disputed, when you are still treating, or when Allstate argues you were partly responsible and discounts the offer accordingly. California courts follow pure comparative fault. An argument that you were 30 percent to blame is an argument to pay you 30 percent less. You answer those arguments with the police report, the photos, and the medical records.
A California car accident lawyer handles the adjuster, values the claim including care you still need, and files suit before the deadline if the negotiation goes nowhere. Whether that is worth doing depends on your injuries and on how Allstate is treating the file.
If a different insurer covers the driver who hit you, the California rules on this page still apply. What changes is the portal, the phone number, and the repair network. We walk through State Farm, Liberty Mutual, and USAA the same way.
Contact Gomez Trial Attorneys About Your Claim
Gomez Trial Attorneys represents injured people throughout California, and our case results total more than $1 billion recovered.
If an Allstate-insured driver hurt you or someone in your family, a case evaluation is free. It commits you to nothing. Call 866-TRIAL-LAW (866-874-2552) or contact us online to speak with a San Diego car accident lawyer.
John Gomez
John Gomez founded the firm alone in 2005. Today, John acts as President and Lead Trial Attorney. He has been voted by his peers as a top ten San Diego litigator in three separate fields: Personal Injury, Insurance and Corporate Litigation. Since 2000, he has recovered over $1 billion in settlements and verdicts for his clients with more than 160 separate recoveries of one million dollars or more. A prolific trial lawyer, John has tried to jury verdict more than 60 separate cases.
