Texas crash reports (form CR-3) are available through the Texas Department of Transportation's Crash Records Information System (CRIS) at cris.dot.state.tx.us, usually within a few days to about two weeks after the crash. You can also request it from the responding agency, such as Houston PD. You'll need the date, location, and names involved. If you're having trouble getting it, we can help obtain it as part of your case.
Jimmy personally reviews every submission — most people hear back the same day.
In Texas the crash report an officer files is form CR-3, the Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report. It is not the same thing as the little card with a case number the officer hands you at the scene — that card is just a receipt telling you a report is coming.
The CR-3 collects the date, time and location, every driver, vehicle and insurer, passengers and witnesses, a diagram of how the vehicles came together, the officer's narrative, any citations issued, and the officer's coded opinion of what contributed to the crash.
TxDOT runs the Crash Report Online Purchase System, part of CRIS. Search by the date and county plus a driver's name, or go straight in with the report number if the officer gave you one. A regular copy costs $6 and a certified copy $8; you get it by email.
Reports generally take about ten days to appear while the officer finishes it and the agency uploads it. If it is not there yet, that is normal — check back rather than assuming no report exists.
Not everyone can buy a full report. Transportation Code section 550.065 limits release to people with a proper interest: those involved, their authorized representatives, vehicle owners, insurers and a few others. As someone in the crash, you qualify.
This is where people lose days. Greater Houston is patrolled by several agencies, and the report sits with whichever one responded.
Houston PD handles crashes inside the city. DPS often works the freeways — I-10, the 610 Loop, I-45, 59/69, the Beltway. The Harris County Sheriff and the constables cover unincorporated areas like Channelview and much of Aldine. Small cities inside the metro — Galena Park, Pasadena, Webster, Nassau Bay — have their own departments. Metro police handle transit incidents.
Most reports land in CRIS regardless of agency, but if yours is not there, you need to know whose it is before you can chase it. Ask the responding officer which agency they are with, and write down the report number before you leave the scene. Those ten seconds save a week.
The report is useful evidence and it is also just one officer's reconstruction, usually written after the fact by someone who did not see the crash. Check the basics: are the vehicles, directions and lanes right? Is your insurer listed correctly? Are the witnesses you remember actually on it, with usable phone numbers?
Errors are common and they matter, because insurers treat the report as a starting point. If something factual is wrong — a misspelled name, the wrong vehicle listed as yours, a missing witness — the responding agency can sometimes issue a corrected report. That is worth doing early, while the officer still remembers.
The officer's opinion about who caused it is a different matter. It is not binding on an insurance company, on a judge or on a jury, and how such reports may be used at trial is limited. If the report says you were at fault, that is a problem to work on, not a verdict.
It will not preserve the evidence that actually decides a contested case — nearby surveillance video, a commercial vehicle's electronic data, the vehicles themselves. Those disappear on their own schedule regardless of what the report says, which is why waiting until the report arrives before doing anything else is a mistake in a serious case.
Authority: TxDOT — crash reports and records · Tex. Transp. Code ch. 550
HPD, DPS, Harris County or a small city PD. This is the single most useful thing you can do.
$6 regular, $8 certified. Search by date, county and name if you have no report number.
Vehicles, insurers, witnesses. Corrections are easier early than late.
Video and vehicle data expire on their own clock. Preserve those now.
Rear-endings, intersection crashes, uninsured drivers, hit-and-runs — in Houston, El Paso, and everywhere in between.
Federal regulations, black-box data, driver logs, multiple insurers. We move fast to preserve evidence before it disappears.
Hurt on the job for a non-subscriber employer, or injured by a third party at a job site? Texas gives you real options.
When the worst happens, we pursue accountability for surviving families with the care and seriousness it deserves.
La consulta es gratis y confidencial. No paga nada a menos que ganemos su caso. Jimmy contesta personalmente, hoy mismo.
Every day you wait, evidence disappears and the insurer gets ahead. One free call. Straight answers about your case — in English or Spanish. If you need a fighter, you'll have one. If you don't, I'll tell you that too.
Free · Confidential · Same-day reply