Get your Texas accident report from TxDOT’s CRIS purchase portal at cris.dot.state.tx.us — $6 for a regular copy, $8 certified, emailed as a PDF. The investigating officer must file the CR-3 report with TxDOT within 10 days of the crash, so search about 10 days after your wreck. Since January 2025 the portal is the only statewide channel — the old mail form is discontinued.
Texas crash reports
Key Facts (verified July 2026)
Last updated
- Where
- TxDOT's CRIS Crash Report Online Purchase System — the single statewide source for every Texas peace officer's report.
- Price
- $6 regular, $8 certified (for legal proceedings), plus a card-processing surcharge; delivered by email.
- The 10-day rule
- Officers must e-file the CR-3 with TxDOT within 10 days of the crash (Transp. Code §550.062) — so day 10 is your search date.
- Reportable threshold
- Injury, death, or apparent damage of $1,000+ to any one person's property triggers the mandatory report.
- Who gets the full copy
- Proper-interest parties under §550.065 (involved people, owners, insurers, attorneys); everyone else gets a redacted version.
- Mail is dead
- The CR-91 mail-order form was discontinued January 1, 2025 — mailed requests are returned. Online only.
- The blue form is dead too
- The CR-2 driver's self-report hasn't been collected since September 1, 2017 (SB 312). No police investigation now usually means no report.
- Scale & retention
- A reportable crash every 57 seconds in 2024 (4,150 deaths, 251,977 injured); reports kept 10 years plus the current year.
One state, one database: why Texas is the easy state
In most states, finding your crash report starts with a jurisdiction puzzle — city police or sheriff or state patrol, each selling separately. Texas removed the puzzle: every peace officer’s crash report, whether written by a Houston PD officer, a county deputy, or a DPS trooper, must be filed electronically with TxDOT, and all of them are sold from one place — the Crash Records Information System, CRIS. You never need to know which agency’s website to use, because there is only one.
That centralization also means Texas skipped the vendor layer other states lean on: your Texas report is not on LexisNexis’s BuyCrash or CARFAX’s CrashDocs — TxDOT sells it directly. Any third-party site charging more than $6–$8 for a Texas crash report is marking up or rerouting you to the same document (our national retrieval guide maps how unusual this is).
The scale of the system is worth a beat: TxDOT’s 2024 Crash Facts count a reportable crash every 57 seconds — 4,150 people killed and 251,977 injured in a single year. CRIS is the paper trail for all of it, ten years deep.
How to get your report from CRIS, step by step
The purchase takes a few minutes once the report exists. The failure points are timing (searching too early) and eligibility (buying the wrong version) — both avoidable.
Wait out the 10-day statutory clock
Texas officers must e-file the CR-3 with TxDOT within 10 days of the crash (Transportation Code §550.062). Searching CRIS before day 10 often returns nothing — that's timing, not a missing report.
Go to the official CRIS purchase portal
cris.dot.state.tx.us — TxDOT's Crash Report Online Purchase System. It is the single statewide source; since January 1, 2025 there is no mail-order alternative (the old CR-91 form is discontinued and mailed requests are returned).
Search with what you know
Locate your crash using the details from the scene — the involved driver's name and crash date, plus identifiers like the crash ID from the officer's receipt if you have one. Less-common name spellings and exact dates matter; try the other driver's name if yours doesn't surface.
Declare your interest honestly
Proper-interest parties under §550.065 — involved people, their representatives, vehicle owners, insurers — receive the full report. Everyone else gets a redacted copy with personal information removed. Your attestation controls which version you're sold.
Pick regular ($6) or certified ($8) and pay
Card only, with a small processing surcharge. Regular serves insurance and personal use; certified adds the legal certification used in court. The PDF arrives by email — download and save it promptly.
Decode it before anyone calls you
The CR-3 is written in numbered codes — injury letters, ~75 contributing factors, a damage clock. Read every field against TxDOT's code sheet, and flag errors to the investigating agency's records division while the crash is fresh.
Skip the $6 — and the guesswork
Which report exists for your crash? The honest decision table
The single most misunderstood thing about Texas crash records — thanks to years of outdated advice online — is which crashes produce a report at all. Since 2017, the answer depends entirely on whether an officer investigated.
| Your situation | What exists | Your move |
|---|---|---|
| Police investigated; injury, death, or ~$1,000+ damage | CR-3 filed with TxDOT — required by §550.062 | Buy it on CRIS ~10 days after the crash ($6/$8) |
| Police investigated a minor crash below the threshold | CR-3 often filed anyway at officer discretion | Search CRIS; if absent, ask the department's records division |
| No police response (private lot, minor exchange) | No state report exists — CR-2 self-reports ended Sept 2017 | Document the scene yourself; notify your insurer; check for a local incident form |
| Crash older than 10 years + current year | Individual report purged under TxDOT retention schedule | Only statistical summaries survive; try the investigating agency for local archives |
Sources: Tex. Transp. Code §550.062; TxDOT crash records pages (see Sources). The investigating agency’s records division is the fallback for anything CRIS doesn’t surface.
The 10-day rule: Texas's statutory clock
Texas is one of the few states that puts the officer’s deadline in statute with a hard number: under Transportation Code §550.062, an officer who investigates a reportable crash — injury, death, or apparent damage of $1,000 or more — must file the written report with TxDOT electronically no later than the 10th day after the collision.
For you, the statute converts into a simple calendar rule: day 10 is your search date. Searching on day 2 and finding nothing means nothing. Searching on day 14 and finding nothing means something — usually a wrong search detail, occasionally a complex investigation (fatality, DUI) running long, rarely a crash the officer treated as non-reportable.
If the report still hasn’t surfaced by week three, call the investigating agency’s records division rather than re-searching daily: they can tell you whether the CR-3 has been submitted, is pending supervisor approval, or was never opened at all.
Full copy or redacted copy: where you stand under §550.065
Texas crash reports are confidential by statute, not public records. Transportation Code §550.065 releases the full report to those “directly concerned in the collision or having a proper interest” — in TxDOT’s implementation: people involved in the crash and their representatives, vehicle and property owners, insurers, employers and guardians of involved parties, licensed media, and government agencies.
Everyone else isn’t refused — they’re redacted. CRIS sells non-qualifying buyers a copy with personal identifying information stripped out. It’s an elegant middle path, and it has a practical consequence: your attestation at checkout determines which version lands in your inbox, so answer the interest question accurately. An involved driver buying a redacted copy by mistake gets a report missing exactly the details their claim needs.
Note what Texas doesn’t have: no Florida-style 60-day blackout. A proper-interest party can buy the report the moment it hits CRIS.
The CR-2 'blue form' is gone — ignore pages that say otherwise
For decades, Texas drivers in non-investigated crashes filed a Driver’s Crash Report — the CR-2 “blue form.” It no longer exists as a state filing: under Senate Bill 312 (85th Legislature), TxDOT stopped retaining CR-2s on September 1, 2017; the retention period for old ones expired January 1, 2019; and TxDOT neither hosts the form nor accepts submissions. The state’s crash record now begins and ends with the officer’s CR-3.
The internet has not caught up — law-firm blogs and form-mill sites still walk drivers through “filing your CR-2 with TxDOT,” sometimes selling the obsolete PDF. Filing one accomplishes nothing: there is no state repository to receive it.
What replaced it is self-help: if no officer investigated your crash, document the scene (photos, the other driver’s license, insurance card, and plate), collect witness contacts, and notify your insurer promptly — your insurer’s claim file becomes the record. Some local departments offer their own information-exchange or incident forms for minor crashes; those live at the department, not with TxDOT. The full story — the repeal timeline, the reporting duty that survives, and the step-by-step replacement playbook — is in our CR-2 blue form guide.
You have the CR-3. Now read it like an adjuster will.
The CR-3 is written in numbered codes keyed to TxDOT’s published code sheet: an injury letter for every person (field 16), roughly 75 contributing-factor codes that carry the officer’s fault opinion (field 38), a damage rating in a clock-face format (field 29), and the sequence of events, conditions, narrative, and diagram around them. The other driver’s insurer will read all of it before deciding what your claim is worth — usually before you’ve read any of it.
We decode every field, the KABCO injury letters’ documented error rate, and the five places fault hides in our crash-report decoder guide — written around the Texas CR-3 as its worked example — and the form itself, all 46 code lists cataloged, in our CR-3 reference guide. Read your report against them the day the PDF arrives.
Errors: agency, not TxDOT
Injured in a Texas crash? The report is the opening move
Texas’s 2024 numbers — 251,977 people injured, 18,218 of them seriously — mean insurers here process injury claims industrially, and the CR-3’s codes are the intake filter: contributing factors anchor fault, the injury letter anchors severity, and both were assigned in minutes at a chaotic scene. Reading your report early, and having someone who knows the codes read it with you, is the cheapest leverage available in the entire claim.
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Texas Accident Reports: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get my Texas accident report?
Buy it from TxDOT's Crash Report Online Purchase System (CRIS) at cris.dot.state.tx.us — $6 for a regular copy, $8 certified, paid by card and delivered as an emailed PDF. Every peace officer's crash report in Texas flows into this one statewide system, so you don't need to figure out which agency's website to use.
How much does a Texas crash report cost?
Six dollars for a regular copy and eight dollars for a certified copy (the version used in legal proceedings), plus a small card-processing surcharge at checkout. Since January 1, 2025 the old CR-91 mail-order path is discontinued, so the CRIS portal is the statewide channel — mailed requests are returned unprocessed.
How long after a crash is the report available in Texas?
Texas law gives the investigating officer 10 days: Transportation Code §550.062 requires the crash report to be filed electronically with TxDOT no later than the 10th day after the collision. Most reports appear in CRIS within that window, so searching about 10 days after your crash is the reliable play; complex investigations can run longer.
Who can get a Texas crash report — and what is a "redacted copy"?
Under Transportation Code §550.065, unredacted reports go to people with a proper interest: those involved in the crash and their representatives, vehicle and property owners, insurers, employers or guardians of involved parties, licensed media, and government agencies. Anyone else can still buy the report, but receives a redacted copy with personal identifying information removed.
What is a CR-3 crash report?
The CR-3 is the Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report — the official form every Texas officer files when a crash involves injury, death, or apparent property damage of $1,000 or more. It records the people, vehicles, conditions, sequence of events, contributing factors, narrative, and diagram, mostly as numbered codes defined on TxDOT's published code sheet.
Do I still need to file a CR-2 "blue form" in Texas?
No — the blue form is gone. TxDOT stopped retaining the Driver's Crash Report (CR-2) on September 1, 2017 under Senate Bill 312, its records retention expired January 1, 2019, and TxDOT no longer hosts or accepts the form. Pages telling you to "file your CR-2 with TxDOT" are out of date. If police didn't investigate your crash, exchange information and notify your insurer instead.
What if the police never came to my crash?
Then, in most cases, no official crash report exists — Texas officers file the CR-3 for crashes they investigate, and the state stopped collecting driver self-reports in 2017. Document the scene yourself (photos, the other driver's license, insurance, and plate), get witness contacts, and report the crash to your insurer promptly. Some local departments offer their own incident or exchange forms for minor crashes.
When is a crash "reportable" in Texas?
When it results in injury or death to any person, or apparent damage to any one person's property of $1,000 or more — that's the §550.062 threshold that obligates an investigating officer to file a CR-3 with TxDOT within 10 days. In practice, officers frequently file reports for lesser crashes they respond to as well.
Do I need a certified copy or a regular copy?
A regular $6 copy serves almost every purpose — insurance claims, your own records, attorney review. The $8 certified copy adds an official certification for use as evidence in legal proceedings. If you're not sure yet whether your case will reach litigation, the practical answer is: buy regular now; a certified copy can always be ordered later.
Is my Texas crash report public record?
Not in the open-records sense. Section 550.065 makes crash-report information privileged and confidential, released in full only to proper-interest parties, government users, and courts by subpoena. The redacted-copy mechanism lets others buy a version without personal identifiers — a middle path between public and sealed.
How long does Texas keep crash reports?
Ten years plus the current year — TxDOT's stated retention schedule for crash reports and data. A report from a crash within that window can be purchased through CRIS; for anything older, only TxDOT's published statistical summaries survive, not the individual reports.
Is my Texas crash report on BuyCrash or CrashDocs?
No — Texas runs its own system. Unlike states that contract with LexisNexis or CARFAX, every Texas peace officer's report is sold directly by TxDOT through CRIS. If a third-party site offers to find your Texas crash report for a higher fee, it's reselling or referring you to the same $6 document.
Still stuck on a Texas report?
Sources
Every fee, statute, date, and statistic on this page was verified against the following official sources on July 27, 2026. Texas processes change — TxDOT’s pages and the statute text control.
- TxDOT — Crash Reports and Records (fees, eligibility, CR-2 discontinuation, retention)
- TxDOT — Crash Report Online Purchase System (CRIS)
- Texas Transportation Code § 550.062 — Officer's Collision Report (10-day filing rule)
- Texas Transportation Code § 550.065 — Release of Collision Information (proper interest)
- TxDOT — Texas Motor Vehicle Traffic Crash Facts, Calendar Year 2024
- TxDOT — Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report Code Sheet (Form CR-3CS)
This guide is informational and is not legal advice. FindAccidentReport.com is sponsored by personal-injury attorneys; see our editorial standards for how we research and fund our guides.