Telematics auto insurance pricing is finally headed toward California, where a bill called AB311, the Consumer Driving Data Protection Act of 2026, would repeal the state’s long-standing ban on using driving-behavior data to set private-passenger auto rates. If it clears the legislature, California would drop out of a short list of one: the last state where insurers cannot price a policy based on how, or how much, a person actually drives. Framed against national regulatory data, AB311 reads less like an experiment and more like the final entry closing out a rollout that was largely finished elsewhere years ago.
Why 49 States Already Run What California Still Bans
AB311 would amend California’s Proposition 103 ratemaking rules, which since 1988 have restricted the factors insurers can use to set private-passenger auto premiums and have kept telematics-based, usage-based insurance (UBI) programs largely off-limits in the state. The bill’s sponsors frame it as a consumer-data-protection measure first and a ratemaking reform second, pairing any new telematics authority with disclosure and opt-in requirements for drivers. That pairing matters because the National Association of Insurance Commissioners tracks telematics regulation precisely because most states got there years ago. NAIC is the U.S. standard-setting body governed by the chief insurance regulators of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories, and it has been publishing guidance on usage-based programs for close to a decade. California’s holdout status, in that light, looks less like caution and more like a regulatory gap that AB311 is designed to close.
Two Decades of Adoption Data California Sat Out
The first U.S. usage-based insurance programs launched more than a decade ago, when Progressive and General Motors Assurance Company combined GPS technology and cellular systems to track miles driven for mileage-linked discounts. What began as a niche discount mechanism scaled quickly into infrastructure. Every vehicle sold in the United States since 2008 has carried an event data recorder, giving insurers and regulators a common baseline of in-vehicle data long before most state ratemaking rules caught up to it.
By the time California’s legislature is debating AB311 in 2026, the rest of the industry has had years to build around telematics as a mainstream pricing tool. NAIC estimated that by the end of 2018, 80 percent of new cars for sale in the U.S. would be equipped with on-board telematics devices, and the same NAIC analysis projected that by 2020, 70 percent of all U.S. auto insurers would use telematics. Those are national projections, not California-specific figures, but they establish the baseline AB311 is measured against: a market where usage-based rating became the default years ago everywhere except one state.
The Regulatory Guardrails Insurers Elsewhere Already Clear
AB311 would not hand insurers a blank check on driving data. In states that already permit usage-based rating, insurers generally must obtain state regulatory approval for new rating plans, backed by statistical rate filings that support the proposed structure. That filing requirement is the same rate-approval machinery California regulators already run for every other line of auto coverage, which is one reason bill supporters argue the reform is more procedural than radical. Some states already require insurers to disclose their tracking practices and devices to policyholders, a template AB311’s drafters have leaned on directly in writing the bill’s consumer-protection provisions alongside the ratemaking change.
The Safety Case Regulators Have Been Sitting On
The strongest argument for AB311 may not be pricing flexibility at all but road safety. Studies cited by NAIC show usage-based insurance programs reduce crash risk by around 50 percent, a figure regulators in other states have used to justify approving telematics programs even when insurers pushed for them mainly on cost grounds. For California, where Proposition 103’s ratemaking restrictions were written into law nearly four decades ago with no telematics contemplated, that safety data did not exist yet when the ban was drafted. AB311’s backers argue that gap, more than any lobbying push from insurers, is the real case for updating the rule now.
None of this guarantees AB311 becomes law this session, and California’s legislative calendar has killed telematics-adjacent proposals before. But the shape of the argument has shifted. Where earlier ratemaking-reform bills leaned mainly on cost savings for consumers, AB311 arrives after a decade in which the rest of the country already built the data infrastructure, the disclosure rules, and the regulatory approval process telematics rating depends on. For California insurers and regulators, the debate now is less about whether usage-based pricing works and more about how quickly the state can adopt the guardrails everyone else has already tested.
