Texas saw over 1,400 fatal drunk driving accidents last year, and they remain an all too common occurrence today.
Accidents involving drunk driving immediately set themselves apart from other personal injury accidents. These types of accidents are approached differently when it comes to determining if and how much compensation is due for damages.
We’ve written a longer article that discusses in-depth the ins and outs of DWI or drunk driving accident cases. Here are the basics of what you need to know.
How drunk driving accidents are different
As with all personal injury accidents, there must be some degree of negligence established in order to warrant receiving compensation. With drunk driving accidents, determining this negligence becomes more complicated than with other types of personal injury.
Texas has a legal BAC of 0.08%. If any driver involved is above that limit, he or she is acting in negligence and can be held responsible for the accident. Additionally, bars can also be held liable if they sold alcohol to someone who was clearly impaired or a minor and caused an accident.
Additionally, punitive damages (damages designed to punish the guilty party) are more likely in a drunk driving accident.
Texas comparative fault still applies
In the state of Texas, you can still be held partially responsible for a drunk driving accident even if you weren’t the drunk driver.
Texas is a comparative fault state, which means that compensation received can be lowered if it’s determined that you were partially responsible. For example, if you ran a stop sign and were then hit by a drunk driver, your received compensation will go down in correlation with how responsible you were. For example, if you’re determined to be 25% responsible for the accident, you will only receive 75% of your compensation.