By Joshua A. Estes. Board Certified, Personal Injury Trial Law — Texas Board of Legal Specialization.
If you’ve just been in a crash in Texas, here is what matters most: get medical care today even if you feel fine, report the accident, don’t give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurance company, and write down what you remember tonight. The rest of this guide walks the first 72 hours step by step — including the mistakes that quietly shrink a claim before any lawyer ever sees it.
The first hour: at the scene
1. Get everyone safe and call 911. Texas requires reporting a crash involving injury, death, or apparent damage of $1,000 or more. Asking for police isn’t overreacting — it’s what creates the CR-3 crash report, the single most important document in any claim that follows.
2. Photograph the scene like a bored adjuster will be grading you. All four corners of every vehicle. The road: skid marks, debris, the signal or stop sign. The other driver’s plate and insurance card. Your visible injuries. And wide shots that show the whole intersection.
3. Get names two ways. The other driver’s license and insurance card, photographed. And witness names and phone numbers, typed into your phone. Witnesses leave, and the officer doesn’t always record all of them.
4. Say less. Be polite, exchange information, answer the officer truthfully. But phrases like “I’m sorry” or “I never saw them” have a habit of showing up later in the claim file. You don’t know yet what happened. You know what you experienced. It’s fine to say only that.
Hours 2 through 24: where people go wrong
5. See a doctor today, even if you feel almost fine. Adrenaline is a painkiller. Soft-tissue injuries, concussions, and disc injuries routinely surface 24 to 72 hours later. Going to urgent care or the ER today does two things: it protects your health, and it puts in the medical record that your injuries came from this crash. The most expensive sentence in an injury case is “I thought it would go away on its own.”
6. Report the crash to your own insurance company. Your policy requires it. Give the facts: time, place, vehicles. You don’t have to say whose fault it was.
7. Don’t give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer. Their adjuster may call within hours, friendly, asking for “just your side of it in a quick recorded call.” Texas law does not require you to give it. A recorded statement taken while you’re sore, medicated, or nervous gets quoted against you later. “Please send that to me in writing” ends the call politely.
This is different with your own insurer: your policy is a contract and it does require cooperation. The other driver’s insurance company owes you nothing, and you owe it nothing.
8. Write your own account tonight. Where you were going, which lane, how fast, what the light was doing, what the other driver said, how your body feels. Date it. Memory reconstructs itself: what you can write down today is evidence; what you remember in six months is an estimate.
Days 2 and 3: building the claim
9. Get the crash report. The officer should have given you a slip with the report number. Texas law enforcement has 10 days to submit the CR-3 to the state, and then you can buy it through TxDOT’s online report system — $6 for a regular copy, $8 for a certified one.
10. Start one folder. Just one: photos, the report number, medical paperwork, receipts, and a log of miles driven to every crash-related appointment. Texas claims can include that travel. Most claims settle low for lack of documentation, not weak facts.
11. Be careful with the fast offer. A settlement offer that arrives within days is priced on a single assumption: that you don’t yet know what your injuries are. Once you sign a release, the claim is closed forever — no matter what an MRI finds in week three.
12. Talk to a car accident lawyer before signing anything. Not necessarily to hire one — to find out whether you need one. A dented-fender crash with no injuries almost never needs a lawyer, and an honest one will tell you that in ten minutes. A crash with injuries, disputed fault, or a commercial vehicle almost always does. In Texas, consultations in contingent-fee injury cases are free, so the answer costs you nothing either way.
Your questions
How long do I have to bring an injury claim in Texas? Generally two years from the date of the crash, with exceptions that can shorten or extend it. When the defendant is a governmental entity, notice deadlines are far shorter. Don’t calculate your own deadline. Confirm it.
What if I was partly at fault? Texas uses modified comparative fault. If you were 50% or less at fault, you can generally still recover, reduced by your share. Fault percentages are argued, not announced — the crash report’s opinion isn’t the last word.
The other driver had no insurance. Now what? Check your own policy for uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM). Many Texans carry it without knowing. Your own insurer then becomes the other side of the table — and yes, it negotiates like one.
Do I really need the police report? For any injury claim, practically, yes. It fixes the date, location, vehicles, insurers, and the officer’s first impression of fault in an official document.
How much is my case worth? Any page that quotes you an average is selling something. What can be claimed is concrete: past and future medical costs, lost income, mileage to treatment, and pain and suffering. What those are worth depends on the facts of your case — and nobody knows that yet, not you and not the adjuster.
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.