Bakersfield, CA, September 25 – A crash between two vehicles on Thursday night sent one person to the hospital with minor injuries, according to the California Highway Patrol. The agency said the circumstances leading up to the collision had not been determined. Few additional details about the crash have been made public, including what caused the two vehicles to collide or exactly how the incident occurred.
Bakersfield Crash at Planz Road and South Union Avenue Injures One
According to the California Highway Patrol, the two vehicles collided at approximately 8:18 p.m. Thursday near where Planz Road meets South Union Avenue in Bakersfield. That intersection was the site of the crash, the agency said. The California Highway Patrol’s report did not include a description of either vehicle or identify the drivers involved.
The person hurt in the crash suffered only minor injuries and was brought to Kern Medical Center to be treated, the California Highway Patrol said. The agency did not release further information about the extent of the injuries beyond describing them as minor, and no update on the person’s condition after treatment has been made available.
The California Highway Patrol has not yet established what caused the two cars to collide, and the sequence of events before the crash remains unclear, the agency said. The report did not specify how many people were in each vehicle or whether anyone besides the one injured person was hurt. No further details about the drivers, passengers, or the cause of the collision had been released by the agency.
What the at-fault driver is required to carry, and why it often is not enough
Vehicle Code section 16056 sets California’s minimum liability limits, and they changed recently. For a policy issued or renewed on or after 1 January 2025, the minimum is $30,000 for injury to or death of one person, $60,000 where two or more people are hurt, and $15,000 for property damage. Policies written before that date may still carry the older minimum of $15,000, $30,000 and $5,000.
Those are floors, not typical limits, and a single hospital admission can exhaust the lower figure before any other loss is counted. Where the at-fault driver carries the minimum, the uninsured and underinsured motorist cover on the injured person’s own policy is often the part that matters most, and it is worth checking early rather than after the other insurer has made an offer.
The deadline that applies to a claim like this one
Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives two years for an action for injury to, or for the death of, an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. The same two years covers an injury claim and a death claim; there is no separate, shorter period because someone died.
Talking to someone about it
Culver Legal represents people injured in collisions across California. A conversation about what happened costs nothing, and we work on a contingency fee, which means there is no fee unless we win. If we do not win, we do not pass the case costs on to you either.
Nothing on this page is legal advice about any particular case, and the facts of a reported collision often change as the investigation continues.
