Texas has its own set of rules that control what happens after a car accident: how long you have to act, how blame is divided, what drivers must do at the scene, and what insurance they must carry.
Understanding these laws can protect your claim before you ever speak to an insurance company. The lawyers at Hissey Mulderig & Friend can help.
If you have questions about how any of these rules apply to your crash, call our office toll-free at 1-866-806-8117 to speak with a lawyer, or send us a message using the free contract form on this page to get answers to your questions at no charge.
The Statute Of Limitations: Two Years To File
Under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Section 16.003, a person injured in a car accident generally has two years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit. The same two-year period applies to wrongful death claims, measured from the date of death. If you miss the deadline, the claim is almost always lost forever, no matter how strong it would have been.
A few exceptions exist. When the victim is a minor, the clock does not start running until their eighteenth birthday. When the injury could not reasonably have been discovered right away, the period may begin at discovery rather than at the crash.
Claims against government entities run in the opposite direction: the Texas Tort Claims Act requires written notice within six months of the incident, and some cities set their own notice deadlines measured in weeks.
In practice, the safe assumption is that every deadline is shorter than it looks. Evidence disappears, witnesses move, and insurers know exactly when your leverage expires.
Modified Comparative Fault: The 51 Percent Bar
Texas divides responsibility for a crash by percentage under a rule the statutes call proportionate responsibility. The jury, or the insurance negotiation that anticipates a jury, assigns each party a share of the blame. Your compensation is then cut by your share. A victim with $100,000 in losses who is found 20 percent responsible collects $80,000.
The critical threshold sits at 51 percent. A victim found more than half responsible for their own crash recovers nothing at all. This single rule explains most of what the other driver’s insurer does during a claim. Every argument that you were speeding, distracted, or slow to brake serves one of two goals: trimming your recovery percentage by percentage, or pushing you past the 51 percent line where the claim dies entirely.
These proportional liability rules also mean that partial fault is not fatal. Many injured Texans assume that because they might share some blame, they have no case. Under this system, a victim who is 30 or 40 percent responsible still has a substantial claim.
The Duty To Stop And Render Aid
Texas Transportation Code Chapter 550 requires every driver involved in a crash to stop, remain at the scene, exchange identifying and insurance information, and provide reasonable assistance to anyone injured, including arranging transport for medical treatment.
Leaving the scene of an accident is a crime. When the crash involves injury, fleeing is a felony, and penalties climb to two to twenty years in prison when someone dies.
For victims, a driver’s flight also opens the uninsured motorist coverage discussed on our insurance page.
Crash Reporting Requirements
Police must be notified of any crash that kills or injures someone, or that leaves a vehicle unable to be driven away safely.
When officers investigate a qualifying crash, the investigating officer files the official Texas Peace Officer’s Crash Report, known as the CR-3, with the state.
Texas no longer requires drivers to file their own report with TxDOT for crashes police do not investigate; that old blue-form requirement ended in 2017. Even so, a written record of any unreported crash, kept for your own files with photos and the other driver’s information, remains valuable if injuries or disputes surface later.
Minimum Insurance Requirements
Texas requires every driver to carry liability insurance meeting the state’s 30/60/25 floor. That coverage pays the people the policyholder injures; it pays nothing to the policyholder.
Driving without this coverage can result in fines, surcharges, and eventual license and registration suspension for repeat offenses.
The floor matters to victims for a blunt reason: serious injuries can exhaust a minimum policy quickly, and a substantial share of Texas drivers carry no policy at all.
Texas law responds by requiring insurers to offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage and personal injury protection with every auto policy, coverages a policyholder keeps unless they rejected them in writing.
The Texting While Driving Ban
Since 2017, Texas Transportation Code Section 545.4251 has prohibited reading, writing, or sending electronic messages while driving.
The fines for distracted driving offences are modest: up to $99 for a first offense and up to $200 after that. Several Texas cities, including Austin and San Antonio, go further with hands-free ordinances banning nearly all handheld phone use behind the wheel.
For an injury claim, the statute’s real power is not the fine. A driver cited for texting has violated a specific safety law, and the citation, the phone records behind it, or both, can become the backbone of the negligence case against them.
Dram Shop Liability
Under Chapter 2 of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, a bar, restaurant, or store can be held liable for injuries caused by a customer it over-served.
The standard is specific: the customer must have been obviously intoxicated to the point of presenting a clear danger to themselves and others when served, and that intoxication must have caused the crash.
Providers can raise a defense when their staff completed state-approved seller training and the employer did not encourage over-service, so these cases turn on proof: receipts, point-of-sale records, camera footage, and testimony from staff and other patrons, all of which fade fast.
Ordinary social hosts face liability only in narrow circumstances involving guests under eighteen.
For victims of drunk drivers, dram shop claims matter because they add a defendant, and an insurance policy, beyond the driver who may carry only minimum coverage.
Punitive Damages In Texas
Compensatory damages repay what a victim lost. Exemplary damages, the Texas term for punitive damages, exist to punish conduct that goes beyond carelessness.
Chapter 41 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code permits exemplary damages when the victim proves gross negligence, fraud, or malice by clear and convincing evidence, a higher standard than the usual civil burden.
Drunk driving is the classic car accident example: Texas juries have long treated the choice to drive intoxicated as exactly the conscious indifference the statute describes.
Exemplary damage amounts are capped by formula: the greater of $200,000, or twice the victim’s economic damages plus their non-economic damages up to $750,000. Notably, the cap lifts entirely when the defendant’s conduct amounts to certain felonies, including intoxication manslaughter.
Seat Belt Use And Your Claim
Texas law requires every occupant of a vehicle to wear a seat belt, with children secured in appropriate child safety seats.
Since the Texas Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Nabors Well Services v. Romero, evidence that an injured person was unbelted is admissible in civil trials, and juries may assign a victim a share of responsibility for injuries the belt would have prevented. An unbelted victim can still recover for the crash a negligent driver caused, but the defense will use nonuse to argue the comparative fault percentages discussed above.
This is one more reason the details of the crash, and of the injuries, need to be developed carefully with assistance from an attorney, rather than conceded.
Contact An Attorney to Understand Your Rights
Every rule on this page rewards the side that moves first. Evidence supporting your version of the crash is strongest in the early weeks, and the filing deadline approaches whether your injuries have healed or not.
The Texas car accident attorneys at Hissey Mulderig & Friend can tell you which of these laws shape your claim and what they mean for its value. The consultation is free, and you owe us nothing unless we win your case.
Find out whether you may be eligible to file a claim or take legal action by calling our lawyers toll-free at 1-866-806-8117. You can also reach us by sending a message using the free case evaluation form, located at the top of this page.