After a wreck on US 281 or Loop 1604, the other driver’s policy may be a minimum policy. In Texas that minimum is easy to state and easy to outgrow once medical bills start stacking up. The floor is not the same as the value of the claim, and it is not a reason to skip your own uninsured or underinsured coverage.
Here is what Transportation Code 601.072 requires, in the subsection that has been in effect since January 1, 2011. The minimum amounts of motor vehicle liability coverage needed to establish financial responsibility are set out in three figures. The per-person injury or death floor is thirty thousand dollars in one crash. The per-crash injury or death floor is sixty thousand dollars, and it remains subject to that per-person figure. Property damage or destruction of other people’s property has a twenty-five thousand dollar floor in one crash. Those figures are often written 30/60/25 on a declarations page.
The same section allows the required coverage to exclude, with respect to one collision, the first two hundred fifty dollars of liability for injury or death of one person, the first five hundred dollars for two or more people, subject to the one-person figure, and the first two hundred fifty dollars of property damage. Read the actual policy. The statutory floor is a minimum, not a description of every policy on the road in Stone Oak.
Why the floor matters on a north-side wreck
A multi-car crash on the 1604 ramp, or a wreck that hurts two passengers in one household, can reach the sixty thousand dollar per-crash figure quickly. That figure remains subject to the thirty thousand dollar per-person cap. If two people in a car hit on Stone Oak Parkway are both badly hurt, those claims share the per-crash figure, and a single person’s bodily-injury share may not exceed the per-person cap under a minimum policy. For that reason, a household’s own underinsured coverage, walked through in the coverage guide on this directory, often belongs in the same talk as the other driver’s floor. Property damage is capped at twenty-five thousand dollars under the same section.
Property damage is capped at twenty-five thousand dollars under that same section. A newer vehicle, or a wreck that also damages a wall, a signal, or a third car, can go through that figure. The liability floor for property damage is not a medical-benefits statute, and it does not pay your PIP medical bills. Keep the two conversations separate when you read an early letter from an insurer.
Ask for the declarations page on every vehicle in the wreck, including a household policy that may carry higher limits or underinsured coverage. A driver who lives in Boerne, New Braunfels, or another nearby city may still have a Texas policy that has to meet 601.072. A visitor’s policy may look different. The floor that matters is the coverage that actually applies to the vehicle and the day of the wreck.
What a minimum policy does not decide
Meeting the statutory floor does not decide fault. Civil Practice and Remedies Code 33.001 can still end a liability claim if your percentage of responsibility is more than half. Clearing the floor also does not start a lawsuit. The two-year window in 16.003 still has to be watched. An early offer at or near the policy limits is not automatically a fair number, and it is not a reason to sign a broad release before the crash report and the first medical picture are in hand.
Personal-injury-protection benefits, when they were not rejected in writing, can pay limited first-party medical and lost-wage amounts even while the liability fight is open. Those benefits have their own rules in Insurance Code Chapter 1952. They are not a substitute for liability coverage, and they do not increase the other driver’s 30/60/25 floor.
If the wreck involves a city or state vehicle, government-claim caps and notice rules sit beside the ordinary auto floor. Do not treat a municipal defendant’s coverage as if it were a private 30/60/25 policy. The government-notice guide on this site walks through that path.
Put the declarations pages, the crash-report request, and the filing window on one list after a Stone Oak wreck. If the other driver carries only the floor, ask counsel about underinsured coverage and about whether a later filing is still needed to protect the claim. Confirm the license of any lawyer you hire, and put the fee agreement in a writing both sides sign.
Collecting the right pages after the wreck
Stone Oak households often keep more than one auto policy, especially when a teen driver, a company car, or a vehicle garaged in another city is in the mix. Ask for every declarations page that could apply, including a policy that covers a relative who was only riding along. Underinsured coverage is written on your side of the file. It is easy to miss if the first adjuster only talks about the other driver’s 30/60/25 figures.
A truck, a rideshare vehicle, or a leased car can carry coverage that does not look like an ordinary private policy. Those files still meet, or they should meet, Texas financial-responsibility rules, but the path to the right insurer can be slower. Write down the company name on the insurance card, the policy number if you are shown it, and the plate and unit numbers. A different insurer than the name on the door of a truck may hold the liability coverage. Do not let that delay the crash-report request or the calendar for the two-year window.
If you hire counsel, take the declarations pages, the photographs, and the report request to the first meeting. Confirm the license. Put the fee agreement in a writing both sides sign. An early check that arrives with a broad release attached should be read against 601.072, against the underinsured coverage on your own policy, and against the official statutes, not against the hope of closing the file before the next medical appointment on the north side.