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Texas Minimum Car Insurance Requirements
Texas requires every driver to carry 30/60/25 liability coverage.
That means $30,000 per injured person, $60,000 per crash, and $25,000 for property damage.
Those numbers sound substantial until a serious injury meets them.
One surgery and a hospital stay can pass $30,000 before the first follow-up visit.
Hurt by a minimum-limits or uninsured driver? Call (888) 713-6653 for a free review. You Win or It's Free.
At-a-Glance: Texas Auto Insurance Minimums
- Texas requires 30/60/25 liability coverage to drive legally
- Liability insurance pays the people you injure, never you
- Insurers must offer PIP and uninsured motorist coverage; both can be dropped only by written rejection
- Serious injuries routinely exceed the $30,000 per-person minimum
- When limits run short, your own UM/UIM coverage often becomes the real recovery
What 30/60/25 Actually Buys
Texas Transportation Code § 601.072 sets the floor every driver must carry.[1]
| Coverage | Minimum | What It Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Bodily injury, per person | $30,000 | One injured person's claim against the at-fault driver |
| Bodily injury, per crash | $60,000 | The total for everyone injured in the crash |
| Property damage | $25,000 | Vehicles and property the at-fault driver damaged |
Liability coverage points outward. It pays the people its policyholder injures, and it pays nothing to the policyholder. Your own protection comes from the optional coverages most drivers wave off at signing.
The Two Coverages Texas Makes Insurers Offer You
Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage (UM/UIM). Texas insurers must include it in every auto policy unless the insured rejects it in writing.[2] It stands in when the at-fault driver has no insurance or too little, and it covers you as a pedestrian too. If no signed rejection exists in the insurer's file, the coverage exists whether it appears on your declarations page or not, a rule that has rescued more than a few serious claims. The details live on our Texas UM/UIM coverage page.
Personal injury protection (PIP). Insurers must offer PIP, basic no-fault coverage for medical bills and lost income after a crash regardless of fault, and it too can be dropped only by written rejection. It pays fast, before any fault fight resolves, which matters when the bills arrive first.
Why the Minimums Fail Serious Injuries
An ambulance ride, an emergency room workup, and one orthopedic surgery in a Texas hospital can consume the $30,000 per-person minimum within days. A catastrophic injury multiplies past it: ICU care, months of rehabilitation, and the income a family stops earning while it happens.
The per-crash cap makes it worse. When three people are seriously hurt, $60,000 is all the minimum policy holds for everyone combined, however the injuries divide it.
When limits run out, the claim does not end. The work shifts to finding the rest: the at-fault driver's umbrella policy, an employer on the hook for a working driver, a dram shop claim after a drunk driving crash, and the UM/UIM coverage sitting in your own household's policies.
Hit by a Minimum-Limits Driver: What the Claim Looks Like
The at-fault carrier tenders its $30,000 quickly in a serious case, and the speed is strategic: a release signed for policy limits can end the claim before anyone checked what else was available. The order of operations matters. Coverage gets mapped first, the release language gets negotiated to preserve the UM/UIM claim, and your own carrier's consent requirements get honored so no coverage is forfeited on a technicality.
Our Texas car accident lawyers run that sequence in every serious minimum-limits case, and the difference between a mapped claim and a fast release is routinely the larger part of the recovery.