Struck by a Vehicle While Riding in Austin? What to Keep When the Driver Contradicts Your Story

When a motorist contests your account of a bike collision, the supporting proof tends to come from four sources: your bicycle and equipment, your ride-tracking data, surveillance footage from nearby private properties, and independent witnesses with nothing to gain. A great deal of this material sits within your control at this very moment, and routine tasks can wipe it out. Fixing the bike, laundering your clothing, or discarding a fractured helmet may eliminate what happened. Nearby video can vanish within days. Preserve everything first. Figure out what matters afterward.

The claims you're likely to encounter

Riders often leave in an ambulance while the driver stays and talks to the officer. So the driver's account can solidify before you've said a word. It usually sounds like one of these.

"I never saw you" is the most frequent. Not seeing someone isn't an excuse by itself, because drivers have to look. The sight lines, the lighting, your lights, and your clothing test that story.

"You came out of nowhere" is usually a claim about your speed or your path. Ride data and video answer it.

"You ran the stop sign" or "you blew the light" needs a witness, video, or a ride file that shows you stopped. People on bikes do have to obey the same signals as drivers, so this one matters.

"You should have been in the bike lane" and "you swerved" are arguments about where you were on the road. Photos of the lane and the damage to your bike speak to both.

"We never touched" matters most when the driver left or nobody knows who the driver was. It comes up again below.

The rules these arguments turn on

Texas gives a person on a bicycle the same rights and duties as a driver, with a few changes written into the bicycle chapter of the Transportation Code.

One change is the rule on lane position. If you're moving slower than the traffic around you, Texas says to ride as near as practicable to the right curb or edge of the road. The rule has real exceptions. You can move left to pass, to get ready for a left turn, or to avoid a hazard such as a parked car, a pothole, or debris. You can also move left in an outside lane that's too narrow for a bike and a car to share side by side, and a lane under 14 feet wide with no bike lane next to it counts. A bike lane blocked by a parked car or full of glass fits the hazard exception, so photograph it. Two riders side by side in one lane are legal as long as they don't impede the normal flow of traffic.

At night, Texas requires a white front light visible from at least 500 feet, plus a red rear reflector or a red rear light. Those are the details a driver's insurer will ask about in any crash after dark.

Austin adds its own layer. The City's Vulnerable Road Users ordinance protects people on bicycles, and it gives you more to work with than state law does:

• On a road with two or more marked lanes in the same direction, a passing driver has to leave your lane or pass at a safe distance.
• When road conditions allow, a safe distance is at least three feet for a car or light truck, and six feet for a heavier truck or commercial vehicle.
• A driver turning left has to yield to a rider coming the other way who is in the intersection or close enough to be an immediate hazard.
• A driver can't pass you and then turn right in front of you unless safely clear of you.
• A driver has to use due care to avoid hitting you on a roadway or in an intersection.

That ordinance applies inside Austin city limits, so the exact crash location matters. Outside the city, the state rule says only that a driver must pass at a safe distance, with no number attached.

Austin has rules for riders too. You can ride on most sidewalks in a reasonable and prudent manner, but you have to yield to pedestrians. You can't ride the wrong way in a bike lane unless it's marked for that. You can't ride between cars traveling or stopped in the same direction in marked lanes. If you're coming out of a driveway or alley, you have to yield. If one of these applied to you, tell your lawyer early. It's far better to deal with it up front than to have the other side raise it first.

Dooring has its own rule. Texas law says a person can't open a car door on the side next to moving traffic unless it can be done safely without interfering with that traffic. Photograph where the car was parked and any damage to the door.

Your bike, helmet, and clothes are evidence

Treat your gear the way you'd treat a car that's still waiting on an inspection. Don't fix it, clean it, or throw it out.

The bike can show where and from what direction you were hit. Look for paint from the car, a bent wheel, a cracked frame, or a tire mark. Photograph all of it, then put the bike somewhere safe, exactly as it is. If you need a value for the claim, ask a shop for a written estimate without any repairs. Keep your receipts for the bike and your accessories.

Keep the helmet even if it looks fine. Damage can show where your head hit. If you weren't wearing one, you weren't breaking the law as an adult in Austin. The City's helmet rule covers children, and the City Council wrote that it doesn't intend that rule to prejudice anyone in a civil case. The other side may still raise it, and how far that goes depends on the court and on your injuries.

Bag your clothes and shoes without washing them. Rips and tire marks help show what happened, and bright or reflective gear helps answer "I never saw you."

Keep your lights, even in pieces, and look for any that came off at the scene. If the driver says you had none, a broken light with road rash on it is a good reply. A photo from earlier that day or a recent ride can help too.

If you were on an e-bike, photograph the label. Texas requires makers and sellers to put a permanent label on the bike showing its class, its maximum assisted speed, and its motor wattage. The bicycle accident page explains why the class can matter.

Your ride data can stand in for a witness

A bike computer, GPS watch, or phone app can record your location, speed, and time as you ride. That's strong evidence when it's your word against the driver's. A file showing you slowed to a stop before the intersection is much harder to argue with than your memory.

Handle it carefully:

• Don't reset the device, and don't edit, crop, or delete the ride.
• Export the original file from the device or app, and save a copy somewhere safe.
• If the ride is public, make it private. Don't delete it.
• If a watch or bike computer sent an automatic crash alert, ask whoever received it to keep the message. It helps fix the time.

Cameras need faster action. Many bike cameras record on a loop, so the oldest footage gets recorded over. Some radar lights and cameras lock a clip after a hard impact, but don't assume yours did. Stop using it, and copy the footage or pull the memory card today.

Ride data has limits. GPS can drift, and the file won't show what the driver was doing. It can also cut against you, because the other side can ask for it in a lawsuit. Keep it anyway. Texas courts can punish a party for destroying evidence, and a deleted ride looks worse than a ride that was a little fast. An engineer who reconstructs crashes can read that file next to the video and the damage to your bike.

Video: look past the traffic cameras

Don't count on a City traffic camera. The City of Austin says its traffic cameras watch live traffic conditions and that video of daily traffic isn't recorded or kept. You can still ask, but don't let that request slow down the search for footage that actually exists.

That footage usually belongs to someone else. Gas stations, restaurants, bars, apartment buildings, and doorbell cameras line a lot of Austin riding routes, including South Lamar, East Riverside, and Guadalupe. Dashcams in other cars count too. Most of these systems record over themselves within days or weeks.

Go back to the crash site, or send a friend if you can't. Note every camera that faces the road. Ask the manager or homeowner to save the footage from the time of the crash, and follow up in writing.

The driver's car may hold data as well. Many newer cars have a manufacturer-installed device that records speed and braking around a collision. In Texas, someone other than the owner can generally pull that data only with the owner's consent or a court order, and it can be lost once the car is repaired or sold for salvage. Some cars also save video from their own cameras. A preservation letter, covered below, is how you ask the driver and the insurer to hold on to all of it.

Witnesses, the crash report, and your medical chart

Independent witnesses matter more in a bike case than in many car crashes, because the rider is often the only person telling the other side of the story. Think about who was there: other riders, people at a bus stop, a restaurant patio, a driver stopped behind the car. If someone stopped to help you, try to find them through the officer, the report, or your 911 call.

The Texas peace officer's crash report, the CR-3, lists your bicycle as its own unit. The officer can mark contributing factors against you just as easily as against the driver. If you left by ambulance, the report may carry only the driver's version. The officer's opinion isn't binding, and you can give the agency a written statement if the report gets something wrong. How to read your Texas police report explains each field and what to do about errors.

Body camera video may have caught what the driver said at the scene. Those recordings and the 911 call can be requested, though police can hold back some records during an open investigation. Neither one lasts forever, so ask early.

Your medical chart is evidence too. Get checked the same day, and tell the provider that a car hit you and everything that hurts. Some crash injuries take time to show up, and pain that appears days later is a common target for adjusters.

If the driver left, or says you never touched

Texas requires a driver in an injury crash to stop and stay at the scene (Tex. Transp. Code § 550.021). If the driver leaves, write down the plate, make, color, and direction of travel as soon as you can, and ask anyone nearby what they saw.

If the driver is never identified, your own auto policy's uninsured motorist coverage may still help, even though you were on a bike. There's a catch that makes your bike especially valuable. For an unknown driver, Texas requires actual physical contact between that vehicle and you or your property. Paint on your bike, a dent, or a tire mark on your bag can be the difference between a claim and no claim. That's one more reason not to clean anything.

If a car ran you off the road without touching you and nobody identified it, that coverage may not apply. A witness who caught the plate can change the picture, because then there's a known driver to pursue.

Why the first week matters

A preservation letter is written notice to the driver and the insurer that a claim is coming and that they need to keep the evidence intact: the car, its data, the phone, and any video. Letters can also go to businesses holding footage. Texas courts can sanction a party that destroys evidence after it knew or should have known a claim was likely. In the most serious cases, usually when evidence was destroyed on purpose, a judge can tell the jury it may presume the missing evidence would have hurt that party. Having the evidence still beats arguing about why it's gone.

Sometimes the road is part of the story. If a pothole, a missing cover, or a construction setup pushed you into traffic, a claim against a government agency follows its own rules, and the notice deadlines are short. Texas lets a city charter set its own notice period (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 101.101(b)), and the City of Austin requires written notice within 45 days.

How fault gets divided

Expect the other side to look for your share of the blame, even when the driver clearly made the bigger mistake. Texas uses modified comparative fault: if a jury finds you more than 50 percent responsible, you recover nothing (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001). Below that line, your recovery shrinks by your share of the fault. The Texas 51 percent bar explained walks through the math.

The general deadline to file an injury lawsuit in Texas is two years from the crash (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003). The practical deadline for video and car data is much shorter.

What to do this week

1. Store the bike, helmet, clothes, and lights just as they are, and photograph everything.
2. Export your ride file, and copy any camera footage.
3. List every camera near the crash site, and ask each owner to save the footage.
4. Photograph the road at the same time of day: the lane, the bike lane, any debris, and what the driver could see.
5. Get the crash report number, and check what the officer marked.
6. Write down what you remember, including anything the driver said.
7. Hold off on a recorded statement to the driver's insurer. What not to say to an adjuster explains why.

Preservation letters and requests for footage are work a lawyer can start right away. Anselmo handles bicycle accident cases on a contingency fee, so the attorney's fee comes out of a recovery rather than being paid up front.

A disputed bike crash usually comes down to what got saved in the first few days. Anselmo can go over what happened on a free intake call and help sort out what to save first. Bring your crash report number, your photos, and your ride file if you have one.