By Joshua A. Estes. Board Certified, Personal Injury Trial Law — Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
If a driver hit you and drove off, here is what matters in the first 24 hours: call 911 and get an officer to the scene, write down every detail of the car while it is still fresh, find witnesses and cameras today rather than tomorrow, get medical care the same day, and notify your own insurance company promptly. That last one surprises people. In a hit and run, the policy that usually answers is your own — specifically the uninsured motorist coverage you may already be carrying without knowing it. Everything below is the ordered version of that.
The first hour: at the scene
Do not chase the car. Following a fleeing driver turns one crash into two and takes you away from the scene where the evidence is. Police can work with a partial plate. They cannot work with a second wreck.
Call 911. Say that the other driver left. That single sentence changes how the call is dispatched and what goes in the report. An officer’s report is the document that anchors everything afterward: the date, the location, the damage, and the fact that a driver fled. Without it, a hit-and-run claim starts as your word and nothing else.
Write down the car before you write down anything else. Memory for vehicles decays within minutes and reshapes itself within hours. Get down, in whatever order it comes: any part of the plate, even two characters; color; make or body style; two-door or four-door; the direction it went; the time; damage you saw on it, and where. Damage matters more than people expect — the paint transfer and broken housing on that car are the match to your vehicle.
Photograph everything that will be gone by tomorrow. The debris field. Skid marks. The intersection with the signal in frame. Your vehicle from all four corners. Your visible injuries. Broken plastic and glass from the other car lying in the road is physical evidence — photograph it where it lies before you move it, and if an officer does not collect it, tell them it is there.
The evidence that actually finds these drivers
Hit-and-run cases are solved by cameras and witnesses, and both have a clock on them.
Witnesses. Get names and phone numbers yourself, in your own phone, before anyone leaves. An officer may not have time to record every bystander, and a witness who drives away is usually gone permanently. In a hit and run, a witness is often the only person who can describe the car.
Cameras. Nearby businesses, gas stations, apartment gates, doorbell cameras, and other drivers’ dashcams routinely capture the vehicle. Most of that footage overwrites itself on a loop within days — sometimes within a couple of days. Walk the block that day and ask, or have someone do it for you. A polite request made this week works. A subpoena sent next month gets an empty hard drive.
Your own vehicle. Do not repair it before it has been documented and, if there is transferred paint or embedded debris, before that has been preserved.
Report it to your own insurer, promptly
Your auto policy is a contract, and nearly every one of them requires prompt notice of a crash and cooperation. In a hit and run, most policies add a second condition: prompt reporting of the incident to law enforcement. Skipping the police report to save time is the single most avoidable way a hit-and-run claim gets denied.
Reporting to your own carrier is not the same as giving a recorded statement to a stranger’s carrier. Your policy requires cooperation with your own insurer. It does not require you to give the other side anything.
Why uninsured motorist coverage is the center of a hit-and-run claim
When the at-fault driver is never identified, there is no liability policy to claim against. What fills that gap is uninsured motorist coverage (UM) on your own policy, which is written to cover exactly this: an unidentified or uninsured driver who caused the crash.
Two things people rarely know. First, many Texans carry UM/UIM without realizing it, because a Texas auto insurer must offer the coverage and it goes on the policy unless the customer rejects it in writing. Second, hit-and-run claims made under UM often carry an additional requirement — that the contact or the phantom vehicle be corroborated by something beyond the driver’s own account, such as physical damage consistent with the collision, a witness, or the police report.
Pull your declarations page today and look for “UM/UIM.” If you cannot tell, that page is worth reading with someone who reads them for a living.
You are also the victim of a crime
Leaving the scene of a crash involving injury is a criminal offense in Texas, not just a civil wrong. Practically, that means two tracks can run at once: a police investigation, and your insurance claim. They are separate. A criminal case that goes nowhere does not end your claim, and a claim does not wait on a prosecution. Texas also maintains a compensation program for victims of crime that some injured people in hit-and-run cases may be eligible to apply to.
The mistakes that cost the most
Waiting to see whether police find the driver, and letting the camera footage expire in the meantime. Skipping the doctor because the adrenaline made it feel minor. Repairing the vehicle before the damage is documented. Assuming that an unidentified driver means no claim — which is the assumption UM coverage exists to defeat. If you are unsure whether you have a claim at all, a conversation with a car accident lawyer costs nothing in Texas contingent-fee practice, and it is the fastest way to find out which of your own coverages actually apply.
Common questions
The driver was never found. Do I still have a claim? Often yes, through uninsured motorist coverage on your own policy, which is written for unidentified and uninsured drivers. Whether it applies depends on your policy and the facts.
Do I have to file a police report for a hit and run in Texas? For any injury claim, in practice yes — and most policies condition uninsured motorist coverage on prompt reporting to law enforcement. Report it even if the damage looks small.
Will my rates go up if I use my own uninsured motorist coverage? That is a question for your carrier and depends on your policy and state rating rules. It is also the coverage you have been paying for.
What if I only got part of the license plate? Give it to the officer anyway. Partial plates combined with vehicle description, damage, and time and location are routinely enough for police to work with.
How long do I have to bring a claim in Texas? Injury claims in Texas generally have a two-year deadline, with exceptions that can shorten or extend it, and much shorter notice deadlines when a government entity is involved. Confirm your own date rather than calculating it yourself.
What if I was partly at fault? Texas uses modified comparative fault: you can generally still recover if you were not more than half at fault, reduced by your percentage. Every case turns on its facts.
This article is general information about Texas law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines in injury cases are strict and fact-specific. Talk to a lawyer about your own situation.
The Estes Law Firm, P.C. · 716 S. Union St, Richmond, Texas 77469 · (281) 238-5400 · Responsible attorney: William F. Estes.