Texas Car Accident Settlement Calculator

Reading your result

Every line of the Texas result, explained

The worksheet starts from the same multiplier method as our national car accident calculator, then runs the number through the Texas rules that change it. Each line in the result panel maps to one row below.

The calculator rounds the final range to the nearest $500. The injury ranges are the same on every FairSettlement calculator, so a Texas figure and a national figure agree until a Texas rule moves one of them. Personal injury protection is not in the range: it pays on top, from your own policy, and the coverage section explains it.

The rule that moves the most Texas numbers

Paid or incurred: why the bill on the statement is not the number

In most states a jury sees the charges a hospital billed. Texas changed that in 2003. Recovery of medical expenses is limited to the amount actually paid or incurred by or on behalf of the injured person. If a hospital billed $40,000, your health plan’s contract settled it for $11,000 and you owe a $1,500 deductible, the medical damages in a Texas case are $12,500, not $40,000. The Texas Supreme Court confirmed in 2011 that the charges written off under an insurance contract are never recoverable and are not shown to the jury.

That is why the worksheet asks for two numbers. The billed charges set the high end, the way the multiplier method has always worked. The paid or incurred figure sets the low end, which is what a Texas adjuster starts from. The gap between them is the negotiating room, and in a case with health insurance it is usually the biggest single swing on the page.

Illustrative amounts before lost pay and fault. Your explanation of benefits shows the paid figure for each bill; what you still owe is incurred.

Who the rule helps and who it hurts

A person with no health insurance owes the full charges, so for them billed and incurred are the same number and the rule changes nothing. A person on Medicaid, whose providers accepted a few hundred dollars for an emergency room visit billed at thousands, has a medical figure that can be a tenth of the charges, and the pain and suffering multiplier runs on that smaller base. Treatment on a letter of protection, where a provider waits to be paid out of the settlement, is incurred at the full charge, which is why defense lawyers examine those bills closely.

The affidavit that proves the number

Texas lets the injured side prove that bills were reasonable and the care necessary with a sworn affidavit from the provider or its records custodian instead of live testimony. The affidavit must be served within 90 days after the defendant answers the suit, or by the expert designation date if that comes first, and the defense has until 120 days after its answer to serve a counteraffidavit from someone qualified to dispute the charges. Miss the window and the bills come in without a fight; serve a weak one and a billing expert can cut them. The affidavit never proves that the crash caused the injury, only what the care cost and that it was needed.

Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 41.0105, 18.001(b), (d), (e), (f); Haygood v. De Escabedo, 356 S.W.3d 390 (Tex. 2011).

Who carries the blame

Fault in Texas: the 51 percent line, and blame on people who are not in the room

Texas reduces an award by the injured person’s percentage of responsibility and bars it when that percentage is greater than 50. At 50 percent you still recover half; at 51 percent you recover nothing. The slider in step 3 shows the cliff. Georgia and Tennessee, by comparison, cut off at 50.

The responsible third party

A Texas defendant can ask the court, at least 60 days before trial, to name someone else as a responsible third party: a driver who left the scene, a company that was never sued, a person who cannot be found. The jury then puts a percentage on that absent person too, in whole numbers, alongside you, the defendant and anyone who settled. Each defendant pays only its own percentage, and the share given to the empty chair is paid by nobody. If a jury finds the driver you sued 60 percent at fault and a phantom pickup 40 percent, the insurer owes 60 percent of your damages, full stop. The one exception works in your favor: a defendant found more than 50 percent responsible is liable for the whole award, jointly with the others, and can chase them for contribution.

Settlements come off the top

When you settle with one driver and try the case against another, the court subtracts the dollar amount of the settlement from what the jury awards, after the reduction for your own fault. Settling with the easy insurer early does not add to the pot; it is a credit against it.

Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 33.001, 33.003(a), 33.004(a), 33.012(a) and (b), 33.013(a) and (b)(1).

The money that actually pays

30/60/25, your own coverage, and the Stowers demand

Texas sets the minimum policy at 30/60/25: $30,000 for each injured person, $60,000 for everyone hurt in one crash, $25,000 for property. In 2023, 14.5 percent of Texas drivers carried no insurance at all, the 19th highest share in the country, against a national rate of 15.4 percent. A fracture with surgery runs past $30,000 before lost pay is counted, so in Texas the money that pays a serious claim is very often in the injured person’s own policy.

Underinsured coverage pays the gap, not on top

Every Texas auto policy includes uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage unless a named insured rejected it in writing, and it must be at least the 30/60/25 minimums. The underinsured part pays what you are legally entitled to recover from the other driver, up to your own limit, reduced by what that driver’s insurer paid. So $100,000 of your own coverage against a $30,000 at fault policy reaches $100,000 in total, not $130,000. Your own fault share applies to it as well, because it pays only what the other driver would owe.

Ins. Code §§ 1952.101(b), (c), 1952.106; Transp. Code § 601.072(a-1).

Personal injury protection pays first and asks no questions

Texas policies also carry personal injury protection unless it was rejected in writing. The required amount is $2,500 per person, and it pays medical bills and lost income without regard to fault and without regard to what health insurance or an employer paid. The calculator leaves it out of the range because it is not part of what the other driver owes; it is money from your own policy that arrives in the first weeks, when the bills do. If your declarations page shows PIP, use it before anything else.

Ins. Code §§ 1952.152, 1952.153, 1952.155.

The Stowers demand

Texas gives an injured person one lever that most states do not. If you make a settlement demand within the other driver’s policy limit, for a full release, and a reasonably prudent insurer would have accepted it given the risk of a larger verdict, the insurer that refuses becomes liable for the whole judgment, even the part above the policy. The rule comes from a 1929 case in which an insurer with a $5,000 policy turned down a $4,000 offer and lost a $14,000 verdict, and the Texas Supreme Court restated its three elements in 1994: the claim is within coverage, the demand is within limits, and the terms are ones an ordinary prudent insurer would accept.

In practice a Stowers letter is the reason a $30,000 policy on a $200,000 injury gets paid in full and quickly: the insurer’s own exposure, not your damages, is what it is protecting. The worksheet flags a claim whose range runs past the coverage you can reach; that is the case where the demand matters most.

G.A. Stowers Furniture Co. v. American Indemnity Co., 15 S.W.2d 544 (Tex. Comm’n App. 1929); American Physicians Insurance Exchange v. Garcia, 876 S.W.2d 842 (Tex. 1994).

Limits, and where there are none

No cap on what you lost, a formula cap on punishment

Texas places no statutory limit on compensatory damages in a car crash case. Medical expenses at the paid or incurred figure, lost earnings, physical impairment, disfigurement, pain and mental anguish are all decided by the jury. The caps Texas is known for apply to medical malpractice claims and do not reach a traffic case.

The calculator does not estimate exemplary damages. They are rare in ordinary crash cases, they need gross negligence proved to a higher standard, and a drunk driver’s $30,000 policy does not grow because punishment was awarded; the money would have to come from the driver.

Evidence the jury hears

Seat belts count against you in Texas

For forty years Texas juries were not told whether an injured person was belted. In 2015 the Texas Supreme Court ended that in Nabors Well Services v. Romero, holding that relevant evidence of seat belt use or nonuse, and of other pre crash conduct that caused injury, is admissible for apportioning responsibility. The defendant must show the evidence is relevant, meaning an expert can connect the unused belt to the injury, and a judge can still keep it out when its prejudice outweighs its value.

The practical effect is on the slider, not the multiplier. An unbelted passenger with a head injury in a crash the other driver plainly caused can still be given 20 or 30 percent of the responsibility for the injury itself. Tick the box in step 5 and consider a higher fault share. The same case reaches a parent who did not buckle a child, through the child restraint statutes.

Nabors Well Services, Ltd. v. Romero, 456 S.W.3d 553 (Tex. 2015); Transp. Code §§ 545.412, 545.413.

Courthouse and county

Justice, county or district court, and the expedited track

Most claims settle, but the court a claim belongs in still shapes it. In Texas the dollar value picks the court and the crash picks the county.

• Justice Court, up to $20,000. Every county has justice of the peace precincts. The rules are simpler, a jury is available on request, and either side can appeal within 21 days for a new trial in the county court.
• County court at law or district court, above $20,000. Urban counties have statutory county courts at law that hear injury cases alongside the district courts; in rural counties the district court takes them. A jury is available to either side.
• The expedited track. A suit that pleads for $250,000 or less in money damages runs under Rule 169: limited discovery, a trial setting within 90 days after discovery closes, and eight hours of trial time per side unless the court extends it. The Texas Supreme Court has proposed raising the figure to $325,000 to match the statutory county court jurisdiction set in 2025; the rule text in force when this page was checked still read $250,000.
• The county. Suit goes to the county where all or a substantial part of the events happened, which for a crash is the county of the crash, or to the county where the other driver lived when it happened.
• Federal court. When the driver lives in another state and more than $75,000 is at stake, the case can be filed in federal court or moved there by the defense. Texas has four federal districts and 27 divisions, listed in the county table below.

Gov’t Code § 27.031(a)(1); Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 15.002(a); Tex. R. Civ. P. 169, 506.1; 28 U.S.C. §§ 124, 1332.

Government vehicles

Crashes with a city, county or state vehicle: the clock is measured in days

The Texas Tort Claims Act lets you sue a government for a crash caused by its employee driving a motor vehicle, with two conditions that are easy to miss. The damages are capped, and the government must receive written notice of the claim, describing the injury, the time and place, and what happened, within six months of the crash. A city charter can shorten the six months, and the largest Texas cities have. Notice is excused only if the government had actual notice that you were hurt. Choose the government in step 5 and the calculator adds the dates and the cap.

Two more rules shape these claims. Suing the government is an irrevocable choice: file against the city and you can never sue the driver personally, and the reverse. And the caps are per person and per occurrence, so a crash that injures three people shares the $500,000.

Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 101.021(1), 101.023, 101.101(a), (b), (c), 101.106; Houston City Charter art. IX, § 11; San Antonio City Charter § 150; El Paso City Code § 3.28.010; City of Austin, File a Claim; Fort Worth City Charter ch. XXVII, § 25; City of Dallas, Notice of Claim.

Commercial vehicles

18 wheelers after House Bill 19: two trials and a bigger policy

Texas has more fatal truck crashes than any other state, and in 2021 the Legislature rewrote how the cases are tried. When a commercial motor vehicle is involved and the defendant asks, within 120 days of answering, the trial is split in two. The first phase decides who caused the crash and what the injuries are worth. Only in the second phase can the jury hear about the carrier’s hiring, training, hours of service or maintenance, and decide exemplary damages. A carrier that admits its driver was on the job limits its own exposure to the driver’s ordinary negligence, and a safety violation reaches the first phase only if it specifically applied to that driver, vehicle or equipment and helped cause the crash.

What did not change is the policy. A motor carrier hauling ordinary freight across state lines must carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage, and most large fleets carry a million or more, so the ceiling that caps a car case is rarely the problem in a truck case. The multiplier does not change either; the calculator values a truck crash exactly like a car crash. Set the at fault limit to $500,000 or more in step 4 to see a range that fits inside the coverage.

Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 72.051 to 72.054 (added by H.B. 19, 87th Leg., 2021); 49 C.F.R. § 387.9. Texas led the nation in large truck crash deaths in each year of the FARS files used here.

Worked examples

Five Texas crashes, put through the calculator

Illustrations, not real cases. Each one turns on a different Texas rule. Type the same figures into the worksheet and the result panel will match, rounded to the nearest $500.

Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 33.001, 41.0105, 72.052, 101.023, 101.101; Ins. Code §§ 1952.106, 1952.153; FARS county records 2020 to 2024.

Every clock in a Texas claim

Texas deadlines for a car accident claim

Two years is the headline, but the dates that lose Texas claims are the short ones, measured in days, that apply when a government is involved. The calculator computes each one from your crash date.

Dates computed by the calculator are a guide, not legal advice. A lawyer confirms the date that applies to your facts.

Federal fatal crash records for all 254 counties

Texas traffic deaths by county, 2020 to 2024

Federal crash records count 4,160 traffic deaths in Texas in 2024, down 7.6 percent from the 4,500 of 2021 and still the most of any state. Over the five years from 2020 to 2024, 21,238 people died on Texas roads, an average of 13.6 a year for every 100,000 residents. The state’s own count for 2024 is 4,150, from 554,146 reportable crashes in which 251,977 people were injured and 18,218 seriously: one crash every 57 seconds, one death every two hours and seven minutes.

Harris County recorded the most deaths in every year, 583 in 2024 and 2,746 across the five, and its pedestrians account for 815 of them, 659 killed after dark. Among counties with more than 100,000 residents, Ector had the highest five year rate, 28.1 per 100,000 a year, with Smith at 24.0, and Fort Bend the lowest at 4.3, with Collin at 5.2 and Denton at 5.4. Three counties recorded no traffic death in five years: Foard, Hemphill and Roberts. Half of the state’s 2024 deaths were on rural roads, a third were single vehicles leaving the road, and 45 percent of the people killed in vehicles were not wearing a belt.

Sorted by deaths from 2020 to 2024. Deaths are counted in the county where the crash happened. Per 100,000 a year is the five year average over the Census Vintage 2024 population. Sources: NHTSA Fatality Analysis Reporting System (2020 to 2023 final files, 2024 annual report file, subject to revision); TxDOT, Texas Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Facts and Crashes and Injuries by County, calendar year 2024 (data as of April 9, 2025); 28 U.S.C. § 124.

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