Killing with a car costs $1.6M, California requires drivers to carry $30K

California raised its minimum car insurance requirement from $15,000 per person (unchanged for 58 years) to $30,000 on January 1, 2025, with a scheduled increase to $50,000 in 2035. Despite the increase, the new $30,000 minimum remains only one-fifth of what the original 1967 requirement would be worth in today's dollars, while the average traffic fatality costs society $1.6-2 million in economic losses. The outdated insurance minimums across states reflect how financial responsibility laws, adopted as a compromise to speed governors in the 1920s, have been poorly maintained despite millions of road deaths.