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Quick answer: The Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report — Form CR-3 — is filed by law enforcement after a crash involving injury, death, or property damage over $1,000. You can request a copy from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) through the Crash Records Information System (CRIS) at cris.dot.state.tx.us. The report is free for people directly involved and $6 otherwise. The narrative, diagram, and contributing-factor codes carry significant weight with insurance companies, though the report itself is not admissible as evidence in Texas courts — Texas Transportation Code §550.065.
The Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report is filed by the investigating officer within 10 days of the crash. Copies become available through the Texas Department of Transportation within about 7–10 business days after filing.
Online: cris.dot.state.tx.us — search by crash ID, driver's license number, or incident details.
By mail: TxDOT, Crash Records Section, 125 E 11th Street, Austin, TX 78701.
Cost: Free if you are directly involved (driver, vehicle owner, passenger, injured person). $6 for standard copy, $8 certified copy for third parties.
If no officer responded to the crash, there is no CR-3. Drivers involved in a crash with injury or more than $1,000 in damage where no officer responded are required to file a Driver's Crash Report (CR-2, the "blue form") within 10 days. CR-2s are not as persuasive with insurance as an officer's CR-3.
Page 1 of the CR-3 includes the crash date, time, county, city, and crash location (street, cross street, GPS coordinates). It also lists the officer's ID, responding agency, and unique crash ID number. This crash ID is how the report is retrieved and referenced throughout the life of the case.
The identification block also shows units involved — each vehicle, pedestrian, or bicyclist gets a unit number. Unit 1 is typically the officer's assessment of the primary at-fault party, though this is not always a fault determination.
Each driver's information is listed: name, date of birth, driver's license number, insurance carrier, policy number. This is where you confirm the at-fault driver actually had insurance and identify the carrier.
The vehicle information includes make, model, year, VIN, license plate, and registered owner. If the registered owner is different from the driver — for example, a commercial vehicle driven by an employee — the owner may also be liable. This matters enormously in trucking cases.
The CR-3 includes a field called Contributing Factors, where the officer selects from a list of numeric codes indicating what they believe caused the crash. Common codes include:
18 — Faulty evasive action
20 — Failed to drive in single lane
28 — Failed to yield right of way
38 — Followed too closely
50 — Speeding over speed limit
51 — Speeding unsafe for conditions
53 — Failure to stop at stop sign
54 — Failure to stop at traffic signal
55 — Failure to stop for pedestrian
56 — Driver inattention / distracted driving
57 — Driver fatigued / asleep
59 — Under influence of alcohol
60 — Under influence of drugs
Contributing factor codes are the closest thing to a fault determination on the CR-3. An officer coding the other driver with "Failed to yield right of way" is a strong signal for the injured party. Be careful: officers sometimes assign contributing factors to both units, which will be used against you.
The narrative is the officer's written description of what happened. Insurance adjusters read this carefully. A narrative that says "Unit 1 struck Unit 2 from behind while Unit 2 was stopped at the red light" is golden. A narrative that says "both vehicles were involved in a collision at the intersection" is ambiguous and invites fault disputes.
The diagram shows the officer's depiction of vehicle positions, directions of travel, and impact points. Diagrams often capture nuance that the narrative doesn't — angles of impact, lane positioning, direction of skid marks.
The CR-3 records the injury severity for each person using a standardized scale:
K — Killed
A — Incapacitating injury (severe injury, unable to walk from scene)
B — Non-incapacitating injury (visible injury, walking)
C — Possible injury (complaint of pain without visible injury)
N — Not injured
This is important: if you were coded as "N — not injured" because adrenaline masked pain at the scene, insurance will cite it. This is why it's critical to seek medical care within 24 hours and document any developing symptoms.
Restraint use is also recorded — whether seat belts were worn, whether airbags deployed. Post-2015 Texas law (Nabors Well Services, Ltd. v. Romero) allows evidence of non-use of seat belts to reduce damages, so this field matters.
Texas Transportation Code §550.065 makes the CR-3 inadmissible as evidence at trial. It is used extensively in pre-trial investigation and insurance negotiation, but cannot be directly shown to a jury. Much of what a good injury attorney does is extract the information from the CR-3 (witness names, contributing factors, officer observations) and develop it into admissible evidence — typically through the officer's sworn testimony and independent investigation.
Request it from the Texas Department of Transportation's Crash Records Information System at cris.dot.state.tx.us. Reports are free for people directly involved in the crash, and $6 for a standard copy otherwise. Reports typically become available 7–10 business days after the crash.
Not directly at trial. Texas Transportation Code §550.065 makes the CR-3 inadmissible as evidence in a court proceeding. But the information in the report — witness names, officer observations, contributing factors — is used extensively in pre-trial investigation and insurance negotiation, and can be developed into admissible evidence through the officer's testimony.
The officer's contributing factor codes and narrative are an opinion, not a binding fault determination. Insurance companies give them significant weight, but they can be challenged with independent evidence — surveillance video, witnesses, event data recorder data, accident reconstruction. A wrong CR-3 is something an experienced attorney can work around.
CR-3 is the Peace Officer's Crash Report, filed by an investigating officer. CR-2, the "blue form," is a driver-filed report used when no officer responded to the crash but it involved injury or over $1,000 in damage. CR-3s carry much more weight with insurance companies.
The officer either didn't assign contributing factors (possible in minor crashes), or the field was left blank pending investigation. Lack of contributing factors makes fault harder to establish from the report alone and usually means the case will turn on other evidence — witnesses, video, and expert analysis.
This guide is general information about Texas law, not legal advice for your specific case. Every case has different facts. For a free case-specific review, call (713) 842-9442 or start an online case review.
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