You got rear-ended at a red light on 10th Street, except you’d rolled six inches past the stop line when it happened. Or you were making a left onto Nolana Avenue when someone ran the yellow light and clipped your bumper. In both cases, the other driver did most of the damage, but you weren’t perfect either. So who pays?
This question comes up constantly at Dashner Law Firm | McAllen Injury & Accident Attorney. People assume fault is binary — either you caused the wreck or you didn’t. Texas law doesn’t work that way, and understanding the gray area matters a lot when you’re negotiating with an adjuster who wants to pin as much blame on you as possible.
Can Both Drivers Be At Fault In A Car Accident In McAllen?
Yes, and it happens more often than most people expect. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule under Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code Chapter 33, which means a jury or insurance adjuster can assign a percentage of fault to each driver involved in a crash. It’s entirely possible for one driver to be found 70% at fault and the other 30% at fault, or any other split that fits the facts. Both percentages have to add up to 100%, and both drivers can genuinely share blame for how the wreck happened.
A common example: Driver A is speeding down 23rd Street, and Driver B pulls out from a side street without checking twice. Driver B made the more obvious mistake by pulling out, but Driver A’s speed meant they had less time to react and hit harder than they would have otherwise. A trained adjuster or a jury looking at the police report, witness statements, and any available video might reasonably assign fault to both. This isn’t a technicality — it’s how real crashes usually happen. Rarely is one driver 100% blameless and the other 100% reckless. You can read the actual statute language through Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute if you want to see how comparative fault is written into Texas law.
How Does Shared Fault Affect What You Can Recover In Texas?
Texas’s rule is called “modified comparative negligence with a 51% bar.” In plain terms: you can still recover compensation as long as you’re found less than 51% responsible for the crash. If you’re 50% at fault, you can still collect — but your total recovery gets reduced by your percentage of fault. So if your damages total $100,000 and you’re found 20% at fault, you collect $80,000, not the full amount.
Here’s where it gets dangerous for accident victims who don’t have a lawyer. Insurance companies know this rule better than most claimants do, and some adjusters use it aggressively. I’ve seen McAllen clients get an initial call from the other driver’s insurer within 48 hours of a crash, suggesting the client was “partially responsible” for reasons that don’t hold up once you actually look at the police report or traffic camera footage. If they can push your fault percentage from 10% to 45%, that’s a massive difference in your settlement check. If they can push it to 51% or above, they don’t have to pay you anything at all under Texas law.
This is exactly why documenting the scene matters so much in the first hours after a crash — photos of skid marks, vehicle positioning, traffic signals, and debris fields can make or break a fault argument weeks later when memories get fuzzy and the other side’s version of events conveniently shifts.
What Kind Of Evidence Decides Who’s More At Fault?
Texas doesn’t have a formula that spits out fault percentages automatically. It comes down to evidence, and the strength of that evidence usually decides how a claim gets resolved. The McAllen Police Department crash report is the starting point — it includes the responding officer’s narrative, any citations issued, and sometimes a preliminary fault opinion, though that opinion isn’t binding on insurance companies or courts.
Beyond the police report, the strongest evidence usually includes traffic camera or nearby business surveillance footage, dashcam video if either driver had one running, witness statements gathered while memories are fresh, and vehicle damage patterns that a reconstruction expert can use to estimate speed and point of impact. In a busier corridor like 10th Street or Business 83, businesses with parking lot cameras have inadvertently captured entire crashes on video more than once — and that footage disappears fast if nobody requests it within days or weeks, since most systems overwrite after 30 days.
Texting and driving citations, phone records showing device use at the time of the crash, and any prior traffic violations can also shift the fault conversation. If you’re trying to sort through what actually applies to your situation, the American Bar Association publishes consumer-facing guides on personal injury claims and negligence standards that are worth reading even before you talk to an attorney.
Do McAllen Insurance Adjusters Handle Shared Fault Differently Than Big-City Adjusters?
This is a fair question, and the honest answer is: not procedurally, but practically, yes. The comparative negligence statute applies the same way whether the crash happened in McAllen, Dallas, or Houston. But claims volume and local familiarity shape how aggressively adjusters push back on fault splits.
In a market like McAllen, where a lot of daily traffic runs through a handful of major corridors — Expressway 83, 10th Street, Ware Road — adjusters who work Rio Grande Valley claims regularly see the same intersections and crash patterns repeat. Some of them get a little too comfortable applying “typical” fault percentages to your case without actually digging into your specific facts. I’ve had claims where an adjuster tried to apply a standard 30% comparative fault reduction to a rear-end collision, citing “sudden stop” language, when the police report and a nearby gas station’s camera showed the lead vehicle had been stopped for several seconds before impact. That’s not typical — that’s a lazy assumption, and it cost the client real money until we pushed back with the video.
This is one of the bigger reasons people call Dashner Law Firm | McAllen Injury & Accident Attorney rather than accepting the first fault percentage an adjuster offers. Once a percentage gets accepted or agreed to, it’s hard to walk it back later. You want someone reviewing the evidence before you sign anything, not after.
What Should You Do If You Think You’re Being Blamed Unfairly?
Don’t argue with the adjuster on the phone, and don’t accept a fault percentage verbally just to move things along. Ask for the fault determination in writing, along with the specific evidence they’re relying on. Then get your own copy of the police report, request any nearby surveillance footage before it gets deleted, and if you were cited or the other driver was cited, understand that a citation isn’t the same as a legal finding of fault — it’s evidence, but it’s not the final word.
If the claim involves any significant injury or the insurer is trying to assign you 30% or more of the blame, it’s worth getting a second opinion from an attorney before you agree to anything. Sites like FindLaw and Justia both maintain free, accessible explainers on comparative negligence rules by state, which can help you understand baseline expectations before a consultation, though they can’t replace someone who’s actually reviewed your specific crash.
Getting The Right Help After A Shared-Fault Crash
Shared fault cases are some of the most contested claims in Texas car accident law, precisely because there’s real money riding on where that percentage line gets drawn. A 10-point swing in fault allocation can mean tens of thousands of dollars either direction. That’s not a place to guess or to trust the other driver’s insurance company to be fair to you — their financial interest is in maximizing your percentage of blame, not minimizing it.
Dashner Law Firm | McAllen Injury & Accident Attorney has handled shared-fault claims throughout the Rio Grande Valley, and the firm also serves clients across Texas, including through related offices such as Dashner Law Firm in Arlington, TX and Dashner Law Firm in Irving, TX. You can review the full range of crash-related services on the firm’s car accident attorney page or learn more generally through Dashner Law Firm’s main site.
If you’ve been in a wreck where fault feels murky, or an adjuster is already trying to pin blame on you, don’t wait weeks to get advice. Evidence disappears, memories fade, and insurance deadlines move faster than people expect. Visit our McAllen office at 813 N Main St #608, McAllen, TX 78501, or call (956) 303-6170 to talk through what happened. The consultation costs you nothing, and it might be the difference between accepting a lowball fault split and getting what you’re actually owed under Texas law. You can also learn more about legal resources generally at FindAttorneyOrLawyer.com.