By Jeff McCarthy, Managing Partner — former Harris County prosecutor and former insurance-defense trial attorney. Last reviewed August 1, 2026.

The Katy Freeway — I-10 west of downtown — is one of the widest highways in the world and one of the busiest freight corridors in Texas. When a passenger car and an 80,000-pound 18-wheeler collide there, what happens in the first two weeks decides much of what the case is ultimately worth. This is the checklist we wish every injured driver had on day one.

First 48 hours: medicine and evidence

1. Get examined the same day, even if you walked away. Serious injury — especially brain and spine — often announces itself late, and a gap in treatment is the first thing the trucking insurer will use against you.
2. Photograph everything you safely can: vehicle positions, trailer markings and DOT numbers, skid marks, debris fields, and your injuries.
3. Record the exact location — which segment of the Katy Freeway, direction, exit, managed lanes or main lanes. It determines which TxDOT and toll cameras captured the crash.
4. Get every witness’s name and number. On a road this busy there are always witnesses; they rarely make it into the report.
5. Say nothing to the trucking company’s insurer. Their rapid-response team may reach out within hours, sounding concerned. Decline politely and hang up.

Week one: the preservation letter

The evidence that proves a truck case — electronic driver logs, engine control module downloads, dashcam footage, dispatch records, drug-and-alcohol test results — belongs to the trucking company, and retention periods can be measured in weeks. A spoliation letter from your lawyer legally obligates the carrier to preserve all of it. In our view this is the single most time-sensitive step in any 18-wheeler case, and the reason to involve counsel before you feel “ready.”

Why Katy Freeway truck cases have deep pockets — and deep defenses

Commercial carriers on I-10 run layered insurance programs that can reach into the tens of millions, and liability often extends beyond the driver — to the motor carrier, the trailer owner, the shipper who loaded the cargo, maintenance contractors, and sometimes a freight broker. Each defendant brings coverage; each also brings defense lawyers. Since Texas’s HB 19, trucking defendants can also split the trial into two phases to keep corporate conduct away from the jury deciding fault — a structure their insurers use deliberately. Our 18-wheeler accidents guide covers how we build cases inside those rules.

The deadlines that actually matter

Texas generally allows two years to file suit — but the practical deadlines are the retention clocks on electronic evidence, and the 90-day and six-month notice rules that apply when a governmental vehicle is involved. Details in our explainer on Texas injury claim deadlines.

If an 18-wheeler hurt you or someone you love on the Katy Freeway — or anywhere in Texas — the carrier’s team started working the day of the crash. Get a free case review or call (713) 300-8304, answered 24 hours a day. No fee unless we win; if there is no recovery, you owe us nothing — no attorney’s fees and no expenses.

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case is different. Full legal notices.

By Jeff McCarthy, Managing Partner — former Harris County prosecutor and former insurance-defense trial attorney. Last reviewed August 1, 2026.

Ask any Houston personal injury lawyer which road appears most often in their files and you will get the same answer: Interstate 45. The stretch running from Galveston through downtown — the Gulf Freeway — and north toward Conroe has repeatedly been ranked among the deadliest highways in America in studies of federal crash data, and anyone who commutes it daily understands why. If you were hurt on I-45, the road itself tells part of your legal story — and knowing how is worth real money in your claim.

Why I-45 produces so many serious wrecks

• Volume and speed differentials. Heavy commuter traffic mixes with port and freight traffic, producing the high-speed rear-end collisions that fill Houston emergency rooms.
• Constant construction. Lane shifts, narrowed shoulders and abrupt merges — and construction zones raise both crash risk and legal complexity, because contractors and signage companies can share responsibility.
• The Pierce Elevated and downtown interchanges. Short merge windows and weathered ramps concentrate collisions in predictable places.
• Impaired and late-night driving. The corridor’s fatal crashes cluster at night, when impaired-driving cases — which can support exemplary damages under Texas law — are most common.

Why the crash location changes your evidence

A wreck on I-45 is surrounded by more recoverable evidence than almost anywhere else in Texas: TxDOT traffic cameras, toll and bridge systems, transit and commercial vehicles running dashcams, and businesses lining the frontage roads with exterior video. Almost all of it is overwritten on short cycles — some in days. The difference between a disputed-liability case and a clear one is often nothing more than whether someone requested the right footage in time.

Crash location also shapes the fault fight. Under Texas’s proportionate responsibility rule, the insurance company will argue you were speeding, following too closely, or made an unsafe lane change — and on a corridor with well-documented congestion patterns, timing data and camera evidence can rebut those arguments with precision. We wrote a full explainer on how insurers use the 51% rule to cut payouts.

If your I-45 wreck involved an 18-wheeler

I-45 is a major freight corridor, and commercial-truck cases are a different animal entirely: federal safety regulations, electronic driver logs, black-box data and layered insurance policies — with retention clocks already running. Start with our guide to 18-wheeler accident claims.

What to do after an I-45 crash

1. Get medical care the same day, even if you feel functional.
2. Photograph everything before vehicles are moved, if it is safe to do so.
3. Note the exact location — mile marker, exit, direction of travel. It determines which cameras matter.
4. Get witness names and numbers; police reports frequently omit them.
5. Do not give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement before speaking with a lawyer.

If you were hurt on I-45 — or anywhere on Houston’s freeway system — the evidence that proves your case is being overwritten right now. See how we handle Houston car accident claims or get a free case review. No fee unless we win, and if there is no recovery you owe us nothing — no attorney’s fees and no expenses.

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case is different. Full legal notices.

By Jeff McCarthy, Managing Partner — former Harris County prosecutor and former insurance-defense trial attorney. Last reviewed August 1, 2026.

Ask anyone how long you have to bring an injury claim in Texas and you will hear the same answer: two years. That answer is correct just often enough to be dangerous. For a meaningful number of Houston injury victims, the real deadline is measured in days, not years — and missing it can end a valid claim before it starts.

The general rule: two years

Under Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 16.003, most personal injury lawsuits must be filed within two years of the date of injury. Wrongful death claims generally run two years from the date of death. If suit is not filed in time, the claim is almost always barred, no matter how strong it is.

The 90-day trap: claims against the City of Houston

If your injury involves a governmental entity — a METRO bus, a city vehicle, a dangerous condition on public property — a second, much shorter clock starts. The Texas Tort Claims Act requires formal written notice to the governmental unit within six months of the incident, and it lets cities set shorter periods by charter. The City of Houston’s charter requires notice within 90 days. The notice is not a lawsuit; it is a specific written statement describing the injury, the time and place, and the incident — and if it is not delivered correctly and on time, the claim can be barred eighteen months before the “two-year” deadline most people think they have.

Other exceptions that change the clock

• Minors — the statute is generally tolled until a child turns 18, but a parent’s claim for medical expenses is not, and evidence does not wait.
• The discovery rule — in limited situations, the clock runs from when an injury reasonably could have been discovered rather than when it occurred. Courts apply this narrowly.
• Dram shop and third-party claims — multiple defendants can mean multiple deadlines and notice requirements.
• UM/UIM claims — claims against your own insurer have their own contractual and procedural requirements on top of the statute.

Why the practical deadline is always sooner

Having spent years on the insurance-defense side, I can tell you how a late-starting claim looks from the other chair: it looks winnable — for the defense. Surveillance and traffic-camera footage is routinely overwritten within weeks. Businesses purge video on 30-day cycles. Vehicles are repaired or scrapped, and their event data with them. Witnesses move, and their memories soften in exactly the ways a defense lawyer can use. In commercial truck cases, driver logs and electronic data have retention periods that can lawfully expire while an injured person is still “waiting to see how they feel.”

The statute of limitations tells you the last day you can file. It tells you nothing about the last day your case can still be proven.

What to do now

If you were hurt in the last few weeks: get medical care documented, preserve photos and names, decline recorded statements to the other side, and talk to a lawyer — especially if there is any chance a government vehicle or entity is involved, because your 90-day window may already be running.

A consultation costs nothing and settles the deadline question for your specific facts. Request a free case review or call (713) 300-8304 — phones are answered 24 hours a day. There is no fee unless we win, and if there is no recovery you owe us nothing — no attorney’s fees and no expenses.

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case is different and deadlines depend on specific facts — confirm yours with a lawyer promptly. Full legal notices.

By Jeff McCarthy, Managing Partner — former Harris County prosecutor and former insurance-defense trial attorney. Last reviewed August 1, 2026.

If you have been in a car wreck in Houston, there is a good chance the insurance adjuster has already told you some version of this: “Our insured may have some responsibility, but you were partly at fault too.” That sentence is not a casual observation. It is the single most powerful lever an insurance company has under Texas law, and it is worth understanding exactly how it works — because for years, my job was to pull it.

What the 51% rule actually says

Texas follows a system called proportionate responsibility, set out in Chapter 33 of the Texas Civil Practice & Remedies Code. A jury assigns each party a percentage of fault for the crash. Two consequences follow:

• If you are found more than 50% responsible, you recover nothing. Zero. This is the “51% bar.”
• If you are found 50% or less responsible, your recovery is reduced by your percentage. A $100,000 case with 20% fault on you pays $80,000.

So every percentage point of fault the insurance company can push onto you is money directly off the claim — and if they can push you past 50%, the claim disappears entirely.

How adjusters use it — from someone who wrote those evaluations

When I evaluated injury claims for an insurance carrier, comparative fault was a standard part of the workup. The file on the injured person almost always included: your speed, your following distance, your phone records, whether you “could have avoided” the collision, and anything in the police report that could be read against you. Not because the adjuster necessarily believed you caused the wreck — but because a plausible 20% or 30% argument reduces the settlement range, and a plausible 51% argument ends the negotiation.

Here is the part most people never hear: those percentages are negotiable. There is no formula. A fault percentage in a settlement discussion is an argument, not a fact, and it moves based on evidence — scene photos, vehicle damage patterns, witness statements, camera footage, and how credibly your side can try the case if negotiation fails.

Common situations where fault gets inflated

• Rear-end collisions — “you stopped suddenly” is the standard play, even though Texas drivers must maintain an assured clear distance.
• Intersection crashes — disputed light color becomes a 50/50 argument unless camera footage or independent witnesses resolve it.
• Lane-change wrecks — each driver blames the other; vehicle damage location often tells the real story.
• Speeding claims — “you must have been speeding or you could have stopped” appears in files with no actual evidence of speed.

What this means for your claim

First, be careful what you say. An offhand “I didn’t even see him” in a recorded statement becomes Exhibit A for inattention. You are generally not required to give the other driver’s insurer a recorded statement, and you should not do so before talking to a lawyer.

Second, evidence wins fault fights. Photographs, dashcam and doorbell footage, event data recorders, and witness contact information all disappear quickly — and the version of events assembled in the first few weeks tends to be the one the percentages get built on.

Third, do not accept the adjuster’s percentage as a fact. It is an opening position from a negotiator whose job is to close your file cheaply.

If an insurance company is telling you the wreck was partly — or mostly — your fault, have that number tested by someone who used to build them. Learn more about how we handle Houston car accident claims, or get a free case review. There is no fee unless we win, and if there is no recovery you owe us nothing — no attorney’s fees and no expenses.

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case is different. Full legal notices.

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