Getting hit by another driver on I-20 or a surface street near the AT&T Stadium area is stressful enough. Then comes the question every injured person asks: who actually pays for this?
The answer depends on Texas fault rules, how police and insurers document the crash, and sometimes what a car accident attorney can prove after the fact. Dashner Law Firm | Arlington Injury & Accident Attorney handles these cases regularly across Tarrant County, and the fault question is almost always more layered than people expect on the day of the crash.
Who Is at Fault in a Car Accident in Texas in Arlington?
Texas follows a fault-based system, meaning the driver who caused the crash is responsible — through their liability insurance — for the other party’s damages. Unlike no-fault states where each driver’s own insurer pays regardless of cause, Texas requires you to establish that another driver was negligent before their policy pays out.
Arlington crashes get evaluated under Texas’s modified comparative fault rule, codified in the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code, Chapter 33. Under this rule, fault is assigned as a percentage. If you’re 20% at fault and the other driver is 80% at fault, your damages are reduced by 20%. The critical threshold is 51%. If you are found 51% or more responsible for the crash, you recover nothing. That single number — 51% — is why how fault gets documented matters so much.
Police reports, traffic camera footage, witness statements, skid marks, and vehicle damage patterns all feed into that percentage. Insurance adjusters make an initial call, but that call is not final. An experienced car accident lawyer can challenge the adjuster’s assessment with reconstruction evidence, medical records that speak to impact mechanics, and eyewitness accounts the initial report missed.
According to FindLaw, Texas’s comparative fault framework is one of the more plaintiff-friendly systems among fault-based states, but it still requires solid documentation to work in your favor.
How Does Texas Comparative Fault Actually Play Out After a Crash?
The theory is clean on paper. The reality is messier. Consider a common Arlington scenario: a driver runs a red light on Collins Street and hits your car in the intersection. You had a green light but were traveling 8 mph over the speed limit. The insurer might argue you’re 25% at fault because excess speed contributed to the severity of impact, even though you had the right of way.
That kind of argument reduces your payout by 25% — which on a $100,000 claim is $25,000 out of your pocket. It happens routinely, and most people don’t push back because they don’t know they can.
What a car accident attorney does in that situation is gather the traffic light timing data, pull any dashcam or surveillance footage, and often retain an accident reconstructionist who can quantify whether the speed differential actually changed the outcome. Sometimes the math favors the insurer’s argument. Often it doesn’t, and the comparative fault percentage drops significantly with proper documentation.
Cornell Law School’s overview of comparative negligence provides a solid grounding in how courts apply these percentage calculations, which is useful background if you’re trying to understand what your insurer is actually doing when it assigns a fault split.
What Evidence Has the Biggest Impact on the Fault Determination?
Three categories of evidence consistently move the needle in Texas car accident cases.
First, the police report. Officers who respond to Arlington crashes document their observations at the scene — road conditions, driver statements, visible damage, and often a preliminary fault opinion. That opinion isn’t legally binding, but insurers lean on it heavily. Errors in police reports are more common than people realize: wrong addresses, transposed plate numbers, or a missed witness. Getting a copy quickly and reviewing it carefully is step one.
Second, electronic data. Modern vehicles store event data recorder (EDR) information — speed at impact, brake application, seatbelt status. This data can directly contradict a driver’s account of events. A car accident attorney who handles these cases knows how to subpoena EDR data before it gets overwritten or the vehicle gets totaled out.
Third, medical records and injury patterns. Where on your body you were injured, and how, tells a story about the mechanics of the collision. A rear-impact injury pattern on someone who was allegedly at fault for a head-on collision doesn’t add up. Insurers sometimes miss this. Attorneys don’t.
The American Bar Association has noted that preserving evidence immediately after a crash is one of the highest-value actions an injured person can take — and that window closes fast.
When Is a Driver Automatically at Fault in Texas?
Texas law and traffic code create situations where fault is essentially presumed. Rear-end collisions are the clearest example. Texas Transportation Code places the burden on the following driver to maintain a safe following distance. If you’re rear-ended at a stoplight on Pioneer Parkway, the default assumption is the driver behind you is responsible.
Left-turn crashes follow a similar logic. The turning driver bears responsibility for yielding to oncoming traffic. Drunk driving crashes also carry a presumption of fault, and in those cases Texas law allows punitive damages on top of compensatory damages — which changes the settlement math significantly.
Red-light runners, wrong-way drivers, and drivers who violate specific traffic laws documented by police or traffic cameras typically have a hard time arguing reduced fault percentages. That said, “essentially presumed” isn’t the same as “automatic.” An insurer representing that driver will still look for any contributory factor they can assign to you.
Justia’s Texas case law database has useful decisions showing how Texas courts have handled these presumptions in contested cases if you want to understand how they hold up under litigation.
How Long Do You Have to File a Fault Claim After an Arlington Accident?
Texas sets a two-year statute of limitations on personal injury claims from the date of the crash — Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code Section 16.003. Miss that date and your claim is barred, regardless of how clear the other driver’s fault was.
Two years sounds like plenty of time. In practice, cases with disputed fault need investigation that takes months. Medical treatment needs to be substantially complete before damages can be calculated accurately — you don’t want to settle a back injury claim in month three only to need surgery in month eight. And insurance companies sometimes run out the clock strategically with slow responses and low initial offers.
Filing a claim with the insurer is not the same as filing a lawsuit. The two-year deadline applies to the lawsuit. Many people confuse the two and assume that because the insurer is still talking to them, they’re protected. They’re not.
Getting an attorney involved early — well before the deadline — preserves your options. The Dashner Law Firm | Arlington Injury & Accident Attorney offers free consultations, so there’s no cost to understanding where your case stands before the clock becomes a problem.
What Should You Do If the Insurer Disputes Fault After Your Crash?
Insurers dispute fault for one reason: it costs them money when they accept it. A dispute isn’t a dead end. It’s the starting point for negotiation or litigation.
If your insurer disputes that the other driver was at fault, or the other driver’s insurer disputes their own policyholder’s fault, the process becomes adversarial. At that point you need someone building the same kind of factual record a court would require.
Practical steps that matter: write down everything you remember about the crash within 24 hours, including road conditions, what the other driver said, traffic patterns, and lighting. Photograph your vehicle before any repairs. Get contact information from every witness at the scene. Don’t give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurance company without counsel — those statements are almost always used to chip away at your fault percentage.
Firms like Dashner Law Firm that focus on personal injury in Texas have handled hundreds of disputed-fault cases, and the approach is methodical: build the evidence file, challenge the insurer’s percentage assignment with documentation, and push toward either a fair settlement or litigation if needed. The firm also handles cases beyond Arlington — including through their Irving and McAllen offices — so if your crash involved a cross-county commute, that geographic reach matters.
For additional legal resources while you’re doing your own research, findattorneyorlawyer.com is a useful starting point for understanding your options across Texas.
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If you were injured in an Arlington crash and fault is being disputed — or you’re not sure how the comparative fault rules apply to your specific situation — reach out to the team at Dashner Law Firm | Arlington Injury & Accident Attorney. You can call (817) 203-8018 for a free consultation or visit the Arlington office at 4275 Little Rd # 205, Arlington, TX 76016. The consultation costs nothing. Waiting too long might.