BOTH DRIVERS AT FAULT IN TEXAS — WHO PAYS?
Texas splits the bill by percentage. Under proportionate responsibility (Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §33.001), each side’s recovery shrinks by their own share of fault — 30% at fault means collecting 70% of your damages from the other side — with one cliff: found more than 50% responsible, you recover nothing at all. Exactly 50-50 still recovers half. Insurers negotiate liability claims in the shadow of those numbers, which is why the fault-percentage argument, not the repair bill, is where shared-fault claims are really decided.
The Longer Answer
THE 51% CLIFF, AND HOW PERCENTAGES GET MADE
Most crashes aren’t morality plays — one driver rolled a stop while the other was speeding; someone changed lanes into someone following too closely. Texas handles the mess with arithmetic: fault gets apportioned in percentages, and your recovery from the other side is your damages minus your own share. The load-bearing details: the bar falls at “greater than 50 percent” — at 51% you collect nothing, while a dead-even 50-50 still recovers half — and the percentages apply to each direction independently, so in a 30-70 split, you collect 70% of your damages from them and they collect 30% of theirs from you, usually as offsetting insurance settlements rather than checks crossing in the mail.
Who assigns the percentages? Before any courtroom does, adjusters do — and they negotiate them like everything else, using the CR-3’s diagram and citations, statements, photographs, and physical evidence. This is where the file you built at the scene earns its keep: damage locations tell collision stories (the paint transfer on a rear quarter argues differently than a crushed front corner), and a teardown-documented estimate fixes what the impact actually was before anyone’s theory shrinks it. It’s also where loose words cost real percentages — a cheerful “I didn’t even see him” at the scene has moved many a 20% share to 40% — which connects this page to the recorded-statement answer.
The practical path when fault is genuinely disputed: file on your own collision coverage and let the carriers fight the percentages. Your repair starts now for your deductible, your insurer pursues the other side through subrogation, and whatever fault split they settle on comes back to you proportionally — §542.204 requires your carrier to pursue your deductible within a year of paying or refund it, and a 70-30 resolution typically returns 70% of it. Waiting instead for two liability carriers to agree on percentages before anyone fixes anything is how shared-fault cars sit damaged for months. The complete two-door decision: the not-my-fault guide (which works even when it was partly your fault).
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