You can make the argument, "Well, they should know better, and if not it doesn't matter." I find that weak. The legal system is amazingly complex around business and fault during accidents. It's so complex, that there are attorneys that spend their entire career focusing on things like this. When dealing with insurance there is no, "Well it's ok, I'm insured." It's, "I'm insured if I can prove I didn't break any of the insurance contract rules," and the people on the other side, they're all better at this than you are. Most people who drive for Uber, etc. have no idea this is how it really is. The driving companies have pushed all this off to individuals, because they know the consequences of them getting involved, and this is why there needs to be laws surrounding things like this.
Gig work is new, and doesn't fit cleanly into the existing framework. Uber et al.'s patch for reconciling gig-work appears to many to be essentially a wholesale rejection of the spirit of the agreement, thus opening up new existential risks for those of small means.
While those arguments may land short of the complete truth, they do appear to hold some merit; Maybe it's simply ignorance, but I'm not aware of Uber advocating for a comprehensive review of how California provides life-support benefits to residents in a way that ensures their service providers are not unduly at risk relative to the general population. Instead, proposition 22 appears to be as close to 'I've transacted profitably; fuck your life, it's not my problem.' as they could hope to achieve.
That's a a failing of your local/state/federal legislators not the company.