Stale figures

California moved to 30/60/15. Half the SR-22 internet did not.

If you go looking for what a California SR-22 certifies, you will find two answers with roughly equal confidence behind them. One is 15/30/5. The other is 30/60/15. Only one of them is a rule that currently applies to anything, and the interesting part is not which — it is why the wrong one survives so well.

What the current figure is

Proof of financial responsibility in California means at least $30,000 for injury to or death of one person, at least $60,000 where two or more people are injured or killed in one accident, and at least $15,000 for property damage. That is the definition section, and it is the section an SR-22 attests to.

The California DMV publishes the same three amounts on its own insurance requirements page, citing the Insurance Code rather than the Vehicle Code. Two different statutes, two different agencies, the same three numbers. There is no ambiguity in the primary sources at all.

Where the old figure is still living

Here is the thing worth knowing. A widely used online reproduction of the California Vehicle Code still returns the pre-change amounts for section 16056 — fifteen thousand, thirty thousand, five thousand, spelled out in words, properly formatted, inside what looks exactly like a current code page. Nothing on it announces that it has been superseded.

That is not a typo anyone made. It is what happens when a snapshot of a code is published without a prominent effective-date, and it is why this site checked the California figure twice: once in the Vehicle Code and once against the DMV’s own page, before publishing it.

The same trap, in a different state, in one section

Virginia shows the mechanism even more clearly, because both versions are in the same section of the live code.

Subsection (A) of Va. Code section 46.2-472 sets out the amounts for policies effective on or after 1 January 2022 but before 1 January 2025. Subsection (B) sets out the amounts for policies effective on or after 1 January 2025. They are $30,000/$60,000/$20,000 and $50,000/$100,000/$25,000 respectively. Both are correct. Both are current text. Only one applies to a policy you would buy today.

Read that section quickly, or scrape it, or ask a model about it, and there is a real chance of coming back with the first set. They are not marked as expired, because they are not expired — they still govern policies written in that window.

Why this matters on a quote

A carrier quoting you at 15/30/5 in California is not offering a discount. It is offering a policy that will not satisfy the filing, which means the certificate either will not be issued or will be issued against cover that does not meet the statute. Either way you find out later, and later is after the DMV has been told something.

The practical defense is dull: ask for the three numbers, in writing, and check them against the section. It takes a minute and it is the only part of this process where you can catch an error before it becomes a suspension.

The next one is already scheduled

Section 16430 does something unusual. It contains its own future. From 1 January 2035, the minimum bodily-injury cover rises by a further twenty thousand dollars — written into the statute rather than left to a later bill.

So today’s California figure has a known shelf life. Any page describing it without a date attached will be wrong twice over: once already, for anyone who copied the pre-2025 amounts, and once again in 2035 for everyone else.

That is the entire argument for putting an effective date next to every number. It costs nothing, it is checkable, and it is the difference between a figure and a rumour.

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