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Austin Personal Injury Lawyer
We Fighting for Austin Personal Injury Victims
Austin Personal Injury Attorney
Austin does not slow down for anyone. Travis County crashes come from every direction: I-35 pileups, SH-130 speeding, scooter collisions near Sixth Street, rideshare drivers cutting across three lanes near Rainey Street. When one of those moments leaves you hurt, you need an Austin personal injury lawyer who already knows how this city crashes and how to make the responsible party pay. For a plain-English breakdown of how injury claims work with the insurance company, the Texas Department of Insurance covers the basics.
Do not wait while evidence disappears and an adjuster builds a case against you. Call Goldberg & Loren at (512) 254-4424 for a free consultation. We are available 24/7, and you pay nothing unless we win.
Matthew Kotzen
A former insurance-defense trial attorney, Matthew Kotzen spent the early part of his career representing insurance companies before switching sides to fight for injured people. He earned his J.D. from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University and has represented thousands of injury victims. He is a Lifetime Member of Best Attorneys of America, was named to the Top 100 Civil Plaintiff Attorneys by The National Trial Lawyers, and is admitted to the State Bar of Texas.
Goldberg & Loren Fights for Maximum Compensation
Pay Nothing, Unless We Win
Texas Injury Law at a Glance
| Deadline to file a lawsuit | Two years from the date of the crash (wrongful death: two years from the date of death). Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 |
| Fault rule | Modified comparative responsibility ("51% bar"): you recover only if you are 50% or less at fault, and your award is reduced by your share. §§ 33.001, 33.012 |
| Who can bring a wrongful death claim | The surviving spouse, children, or parents of the person who died. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.004 |
| Punitive (exemplary) damages | Available only on clear and convincing evidence of gross negligence, malice, or fraud — which serious drunk-driving cases can meet. Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.003 |
| Reporting the crash | Notify police immediately when there is injury, death, or a vehicle that cannot be driven away safely. Tex. Transp. Code § 550.026 |
How Austin’s Explosive Growth Turned Its Roads Into Crash Zones
Austin used to feel like a laid-back college town, but tech companies keep opening offices and new residents keep arriving, adding more cars and unfamiliar drivers to roads never built for this much traffic. Goldberg & Loren built its Texas injury practice around this kind of change, and we do not treat an Austin wreck like a generic fender bender.
Gridlock and High Speed Wrecks on I-35 and MoPac
I-35 splits Austin down the middle and carries more traffic than it was designed for, and MoPac (Loop 1) runs parallel and fills up just as fast, both swinging between total gridlock and dangerously high speeds within the same rush hour.
Stop-and-go traffic breeds rear-end collisions, and once traffic breaks open past a bottleneck, some drivers gun it, turning a minor mistake into a severe wreck.
We investigate by pulling traffic-camera footage, black box data, and witness statements to show whether a driver was following too closely or speeding, because insurers love to call gridlock crashes low-speed taps when a wreck at forty-five is anything but.
New Residents New Drivers and Rising Crash Rates
Thousands of new residents move to Austin every year, most without any real feel for how the traffic moves.
A driver who just relocated might not expect MoPac’s quick lane decisions or SH-130’s higher speed limits, and more drivers competing for the same lanes shows up as more fender benders near interchanges like the US-183 exits. We build cases around how growth has changed the risk here, something an out-of-state insurer does not always grasp.
Event Season Traffic From SXSW to ACL
SXSW takes over downtown for days, packing Sixth Street and Rainey Street with pedestrians, cyclists, and cars, and Austin City Limits pulls a similar crowd into Zilker Park every fall.
Event season adds impaired drivers, distracted pedestrians, and rideshare vehicles stopping in traffic lanes. We handle the surge every year, and because festival crowds disappear fast, the investigation cannot wait for footage to get deleted or witnesses to leave town.
The Modern Austin Crashes Older Firms Overlook
A lawyer who has not updated their playbook in a decade will miss half of what causes crashes in Austin today.
Rideshare vehicles, autonomous test vehicles, and electric scooters each bring new evidence, insurance structures, and legal questions a traditional car crash never raises, and a firm that only knows a simple two-car collision walks in unprepared. We built our practice around staying current.
Uber and Lyft Rideshare Collisions
Rideshare vehicles are everywhere in Austin, and a driver juggling a dash-mounted phone, a fare request, and last-second directions is not watching the lane.
Figuring out who pays gets complicated fast, since coverage shifts depending on whether the app was off, waiting for a request, or running a trip. Uber and Lyft carry large commercial policies, but only under the right conditions at the moment of the crash, so an adjuster will argue your crash falls into the cheapest coverage tier, which only works if nobody checks the app data.
We pull the trip status, driver logs, and app data to prove which policy applies, which often unlocks a much larger policy than an adjuster offers.
Autonomous and Self-Driving Vehicle Crashes
Austin has become one of the country’s testing grounds for autonomous vehicles. When that software misjudges a merge or misses a pedestrian, the crash raises a question no traditional accident answers: who is responsible when the driver is a computer?
Liability can point toward the operator, the software company, or the manufacturer, and sensor data, software logs, and company records become the real evidence here, far more than a police report, so we move quickly to demand preservation of that data before a company can claim it was routinely deleted.
Electric Scooter and Cyclist Injuries
Electric scooters cover almost every downtown sidewalk and bike lane in Austin, and since neither a scooter nor a bike offers real protection, a driver who fails to check a mirror before turning can end a ride in an instant.
These crashes follow avoidable patterns: right turns without checking the bike lane, car doors opening without warning, potholes on older streets, and distracted drivers failing to yield.
We treat scooter and bicycle injuries with the same seriousness as any car-crash claim, and when insurers blame the rider for choosing a scooter, we push back with facts, not assumptions.
The Austin Injury Cases Goldberg and Loren Handles
We built a Texas practice around handling the full range of Austin crashes: car wrecks, commercial truck collisions, motorcycle crashes, drunk-driving claims, and wrongful death cases all come through our doors regularly. Here is how we approach the cases we see most.
Car and Auto Accident Claims
Car crashes generate more injury claims in Austin than any other category. Some injuries show up right away; others, like whiplash and concussions, take days to surface, and adjusters use that delay to argue a real injury would have hurt immediately. We gather the police report, scene photos, and complete medical records before an adjuster can twist the timeline, connecting your symptoms to the crash with documentation.
Truck and 18 Wheeler Claims
Eighteen-wheelers roll through Austin on I-35, SH-130, and SH-71 every day. A fully loaded semi can weigh twenty times more than a sedan, so when a fatigued or distracted trucker drifts out of a lane, the smaller vehicle absorbs almost all of the force. Liability rarely stops with the driver: a trucking company that skipped maintenance, a shipper that overloaded a trailer, or a broker that pushed an unsafe schedule can share the blame. We send preservation letters early so black box data, hours-of-service logs, and inspection records cannot vanish, and we identify every company that touched the truck.
Motorcycle Accident Claims
Riders love the open stretches of SH-71 and the hill country outside Austin, but not every driver watches for them. A car turning left across a rider's path remains one of the most common causes of motorcycle injuries in Texas, and with no crumple zone and no airbag, a rider absorbs force a car driver would walk away from. Riders also face a bias that assumes the motorcyclist was reckless, so we push back with scene photos, witness accounts, and crash reconstruction showing how the other driver caused the wreck.
Drunk Driving Crash Claims
Sixth Street, Rainey Street, and the Domain draw huge crowds every weekend, and not everyone who drinks leaves their keys behind. Texas law can treat drunk-driving crashes differently, allowing victims to pursue exemplary (punitive) damages on top of standard compensation when the driver’s conduct rises to gross negligence (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.003). A bar that kept serving an obviously intoxicated patron can sometimes share liability under the Texas Dram Shop Act (Tex. Alco. Bev. Code § 2.02), and criminal charges do not automatically resolve your civil claim. We pursue every avenue of accountability, from the driver's insurance to any establishment that overserved them, gathering police reports, blood-alcohol results, and witness statements while it is still fresh.
Wrongful Death Claims
Some Austin crashes take a life instead of just changing one. Texas law lets a surviving spouse, children, or parents bring a wrongful death claim against whoever caused the fatal wreck (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 71.004), and a separate survival claim can recover for what the deceased suffered before passing (§ 71.021). Funeral costs, lost future income, the loss of guidance, and the mental anguish and loss of companionship all factor into what a family can recover. We handle these claims with the seriousness they deserve, moving quickly to preserve evidence.
How Austin Personal Injury Lawyers Prove Fault When Technology Is Involved
Proving fault used to mean a police report and a photo of skid marks. That still matters, but in Austin it no longer stands on its own, where rideshare apps track every trip, dashcams catch footage from multiple angles, and modern vehicles log speed and braking automatically before a crash.
A lawyer who does not know how to access that data walks into a negotiation at a real disadvantage, so we go after it immediately, before it gets overwritten or conveniently lost.
App Data Dashcams and Vehicle Logs
Rideshare apps store GPS coordinates and driver-status data, dashcams capture the seconds before impact, and modern vehicles carry event data recorders (black boxes) logging speed and braking. This evidence does not wait: rideshare companies purge old trip data on their own schedule, dashcam footage gets overwritten within days, and vehicle logs disappear if a damaged car gets repaired too quickly. We send preservation requests the moment we take your case, because that speed is often the difference between proof and guesswork.
How the Texas 51 Percent Fault Rule Affects Your Money
Texas follows a rule that can reduce or wipe out your compensation depending on how much blame lands on you. Under Texas’s modified comparative responsibility rule (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 33.001), you can still recover damages as long as you are found not more than 50 percent responsible for the crash. Your total award gets reduced by whatever percentage of fault the jury or insurer assigns to you (§ 33.012), and once your share passes 50 percent, you recover nothing.
Some adjusters shift blame onto you specifically to push your fault toward that cutoff, so we fight every attempt to inflate your share using crash reconstruction, data, and witness statements.
What Your Austin Injury Claim Is Worth
A serious crash costs far more than a repair bill or a hospital visit shows on paper, and Texas law allows injury victims to recover for all of it. We calculate the full value of an Austin claim, both the bills on the table and the costs still headed your way, and refuse to let an adjuster shrink your losses to a fast, low number.
The Damages You Can Recover
A complete injury claim accounts for the long tail of a serious injury: medical bills from the emergency room through future surgery and rehabilitation, lost wages and reduced earning power, property damage, the pain and daily toll of the injury, and wrongful death damages when a crash proves fatal.
Some costs are obvious right away; others become clear months later, and a rushed settlement almost always misses that second category, which is why we work with your treating doctors to project future medical costs before we discuss a number.
The Two-Year Deadline and Why Evidence Vanishes Fast
Texas generally gives injury victims two years from the date of the crash to file a lawsuit, and courts enforce that deadline strictly (Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003). In Austin, that lawsuit is filed with the Travis County district courts at 1700 Guadalupe Street.
But evidence disappears far faster than that deadline: dashcam footage gets overwritten within days, rideshare data gets purged, and witnesses forget details the longer a case drags on.
We move fast on every new case, sending preservation letters and securing records within days, because waiting to call a lawyer while the deadline feels far away is how strong cases turn weak.
How Long Do You Have to Report a Crash in Texas?
Reporting a crash and filing a lawsuit are two very different deadlines, and the reporting one is far shorter. Under Texas law, if anyone is injured or killed, or a vehicle is too damaged to be driven away safely, the drivers involved must notify police immediately, by the quickest means available, not days later (Tex. Transp. Code § 550.026).
You also have to stop at the scene, give your name, address, and insurance information, and help anyone who is hurt (§§ 550.021–550.023). Leaving the scene of an injury crash is a serious crime in Texas, not a paperwork issue.
The “ten days to file a crash report” you may have heard about is actually the investigating police officer’s deadline to send the official crash report to the Texas Department of Transportation when a wreck causes injury, death, or at least $1,000 in property damage (§ 550.062).
Your job is to report the crash to police right away, then notify your own insurer promptly. If your crash happened inside Austin city limits, get a copy of your report from APD Headquarters at 715 E. 8th Street, Austin, TX 78701 (512-974-2000), or order it online through TxDOT.
Austin Injury Questions People Ask Before They Call
A good law firm answers your questions directly instead of hiding behind vague reassurances. Here are the ones Austin injury victims ask most often, and if yours is not covered, that is what a free consultation is for: describe what happened and get a real answer instead of a generic guess.
Contact Austin Personal Injury Lawyers at Goldberg and Loren Today
Getting hurt in a crash you did not cause leaves you in pain, stressed, and staring at bills you never agreed to take on, and you should not have to face an insurance company alone while you are still trying to heal.
Goldberg & Loren stands with injured people across Austin and Travis County: our injury lawyers investigate the crash, take on insurers directly, and pursue full compensation for your medical bills, lost income, and pain. You pay nothing unless we win, the consultation is always free, and we answer the phone 24/7.
Evidence fades fast, and the two-year deadline can close a claim before you realize what you lost, so talk to us through our contact page or call (512) 254-4424 to start your free consultation.
The Texas laws described on this page are cited to the official statutes published by the Texas Legislature and were last reviewed on August 6, 2026.
- Statute of limitations (2 years), Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003
- Comparative responsibility & reduction of damages, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 33.001, 33.012
- Wrongful death & survival actions, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 71.004, 71.021
- Exemplary (punitive) damages standard, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 41.003
- Dram Shop Act (provider liability), Tex. Alco. Bev. Code § 2.02
- Duty to report a crash, Tex. Transp. Code §§ 550.021–550.026, 550.062
- Texas crash data, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)
- Crash reports in Austin, Austin Police Department
- Where Austin injury suits are filed, Travis County District Courts
Goldberg & Loren
211 Ranch Rd 620 S, Suite #230
Lakeway, TX 78734
(512) 254-4424
In my experience, victims of personal injury claims are looking for answers. My decades of experience is exactly what they need.