How do I get my crash report in Houston?

The report you want is the CR-3

In Texas the crash report an officer files is form CR-3, the Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report. It is not the same thing as the little card with a case number the officer hands you at the scene — that card is just a receipt telling you a report is coming.

The CR-3 collects the date, time and location, every driver, vehicle and insurer, passengers and witnesses, a diagram of how the vehicles came together, the officer's narrative, any citations issued, and the officer's coded opinion of what contributed to the crash.

How to get it

If Houston police worked the crash: HPD sells its reports through LexisNexis BuyCrash (buycrash.lexisnexisrisk.com) for $6, usually five to eight days after the crash. You can also buy one in person at HPD's office at 1200 Travis St., first floor, weekdays from 8 to 5.

If another agency worked it — DPS, the Harris County Sheriff, a constable or most small-city departments — use TxDOT's Crash Report Online Purchase System at cris.txdot.gov. Search by the date and county plus a driver's name, or go straight in with the report number if the officer gave you one. A regular copy costs $6 and a certified copy $8, plus a small online fee; you get it by email.

Reports generally take about ten days to appear while the officer finishes it and the agency uploads it. If it is not there yet, that is normal — it does not mean no report exists, and we keep watching for it.

Not everyone can buy a full report. Transportation Code section 550.065 limits release to people with a proper interest: those involved, their authorized representatives, vehicle owners, insurers and a few others. As someone in the crash, you qualify.

The Houston complication: which agency worked it

This is where people lose days. Greater Houston is patrolled by several agencies, and the report sits with whichever one responded.

Houston PD handles crashes inside the city. DPS often works the freeways — I-10, the 610 Loop, I-45, 59/69, the Beltway. The Harris County Sheriff and the constables cover unincorporated areas like Channelview and much of Aldine. Small cities inside the metro — Galena Park, Pasadena, Webster, Nassau Bay — have their own departments. Metro police handle transit incidents.

Outside HPD, most reports land in CRIS regardless of agency, but if yours is not there, you need to know whose it is before you can chase it. Ask the responding officer which agency they are with, and write down the report number before you leave the scene. Those ten seconds save a week.

When you get it, read it critically

The report is useful evidence and it is also just one officer's reconstruction, usually written after the fact by someone who did not see the crash. Check the basics: are the vehicles, directions and lanes right? Is your insurer listed correctly? Are the witnesses you remember actually on it, with usable phone numbers?

Errors are common and they matter, because insurers treat the report as a starting point. If something factual is wrong — a misspelled name, the wrong vehicle listed as yours, a missing witness — the responding agency can sometimes issue a corrected report. We ask for that early, while the officer still remembers.

The officer's opinion about who caused it is a different matter. It is not binding on an insurance company, on a judge or on a jury, and how such reports may be used at trial is limited. If the report says you were at fault, that is a problem to work on, not a verdict.

What the report will not do

It will not preserve the evidence that actually decides a contested case — nearby surveillance video, a commercial vehicle's electronic data, the vehicles themselves. Those disappear on their own schedule regardless of what the report says, which is why waiting until the report arrives before doing anything else is a mistake in a serious case.

Authority: TxDOT — crash reports and records · Tex. Transp. Code ch. 550 · HPD — crash reports