Render Aid. Two words from a section heading, and the duty that separates a crash from a crime. A driver in a collision that hurts someone owes four things before anything else: stop, return, find out whether anyone needs help, and stay.
The rule. The operator of a vehicle involved in a collision “that results or is reasonably likely to result in injury to or death of a person” shall “immediately stop the vehicle at the scene of the collision or as close to the scene as possible,” shall “immediately return to the scene” if the vehicle was not stopped there, shall “immediately determine whether a person is involved in the collision, and if a person is involved in the collision, whether that person requires aid,” and shall remain at the scene until the duties of Section 550.023 are met (Transportation Code Section 550.021). That section is the aid. The operator shall give his name and address, the vehicle’s registration number and the name of his liability insurer to anyone injured, and to the driver or occupant of a vehicle involved or anyone attending it, show his license if asked, and “provide any person injured in the collision reasonable assistance, including transporting or making arrangements for transporting the person to a physician or hospital for medical treatment if it is apparent that treatment is necessary, or if the injured person requests the transportation” (Section 550.023). The statute does not let a driver decide at the wheel that no one was hurt; the duty to determine is the third item on the list, and it comes before the duty to stay. Leaving is a crime by itself: a felony of the second degree when the collision resulted in a death, a felony of the third degree when it resulted in serious bodily injury, and for any other injury up to five years in prison or a year in jail, a fine of up to five thousand dollars, or both (Section 550.021(c)).
The occasion. Saturday night in San Antonio, at about 10:30, at San Pedro Avenue and Oblate Drive, police were told a woman was using the crosswalk when a speeding red truck hit her; “[t]he driver fled the scene without stopping to help,” she was taken to a hospital with serious injuries and later died, no arrest has been made and the driver is unknown, and police said the information could change (KSAT). No one is named here, and nothing on this page is about that case. It is about the pattern, which Texas sees every week. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported, from federal data, an estimated 737,100 hit-and-run crashes in 2015, one every 43 seconds somewhere in the country, and in 2016, 1,980 fatal hit-and-run crashes that killed 2,049 people, the most ever recorded to that point (AAA Foundation). The people most often left on the pavement are the ones with no steel around them: Texas counted 6,095 crashes involving pedestrians in 2024, 772 of them dead and 1,455 seriously injured, and people on foot, in only one percent of the state’s crashes, are 19 percent of its roadway deaths (TxDOT), the toll On Foot walked through and the injury The Wrap and the Ground explains. A crosswalk is a right of way written into the code: where no signal is in operation, the operator “shall stop and yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing a roadway in a crosswalk” who is on the vehicle’s half of the road or close enough from the other half to be in danger, no one may pass a vehicle stopped at a crosswalk to let a pedestrian cross, and a pedestrian may not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety into the path of a vehicle so close that the driver cannot stop and yield (Section 552.003); where there is a signal, a driver facing a steady red stops at the line, or before the crosswalk (Section 544.007). The defense’s first sentence in these cases is the one “No Crosswalk” Is Not the End of the Sentence answers.
In a civil case. The duty to stop and give aid does three kinds of work in a lawsuit, and only one of them needs the driver to be caught. First, leaving is evidence. A jury may ask why a driver ran, and the usual answer, a consciousness of fault, is what Flight describes; it is also part of what can turn ordinary negligence into the conscious indifference that opens the door to exemplary damages, most directly for the harm of leaving an injured person without help, under the clear-and-convincing burden Intoxication explains. Second, the statute is written for the person on the ground. A rule that requires a driver to find out whether someone is hurt and to get that person to a doctor exists to protect the injured, which is the class question Negligence Per Se asks first; whether the minutes that passed before help came added to the injury is a question for the physicians, and it is a separate harm from the collision itself. Third, when the driver is never found, the case changes rooms rather than ending. It turns to the victim’s own uninsured motorist coverage, and Texas law puts a condition on a claim against an unknown driver: the policy must “require that, for the insured to recover under the uninsured motorist coverage if the owner or operator of any motor vehicle that causes bodily injury or property damage to the insured is unknown, actual physical contact must have occurred between the motor vehicle owned or operated by the unknown person and the person or property of the insured” (Insurance Code Section 1952.104). A person on foot who was struck has the contact; the driver run off the road by a car that never touched him does not, which is the problem Single-Vehicle lays out. And the clock does not wait for the search: the two-year limitations period Limitations describes runs on the claim against the driver from the day of the crash whether or not anyone has been found, and the claim under the uninsured motorist coverage is a contract claim, with notice terms and a clock of its own in the policy.
The move. The scene gives up the driver more often than the driver expects. The cameras at the intersection and on the businesses facing it, pulled before they overwrite. The parts the vehicle left behind, a lens, a mirror, a piece of grille, paint on the clothing, which identify a make and model and sometimes a year. The 911 recordings and the time stamps, which fix how long the person lay there. The body shops and the glass shops in the weeks after. The victim’s own policy and every policy in the household, read for the uninsured motorist coverage before anyone says there is no one to sue. And the hospital record of the first hour, which is where the question of what the delay cost is answered. Spoliation is the reason the letters go out the first week.
Stop, return, find out, stay. The statute puts the injured person first, and so does the case that follows, whether or not the driver is ever found.
The duty and the offense: Tex. Transp. Code § 550.021 and § 550.023. The crosswalk and the signal: § 552.003 and § 544.007. The unknown driver: Tex. Ins. Code § 1952.104. The occasion: KSAT, Oct. 11, 2026, 9:48 a.m. (San Pedro Avenue at Oblate Drive, about 10:30 p.m. Saturday; a woman in the crosswalk hit by a speeding red truck; the driver fled without stopping to help; she died at a hospital; no arrest, driver unknown; information could change). The count: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Hit-and-Run Crashes: Prevalence, Contributing Factors and Countermeasures (April 2018) (an estimated 737,100 hit-and-run crashes in 2015, one every 43 seconds; 1,980 fatal hit-and-run crashes and 2,049 deaths in 2016, the highest number recorded to that point); TxDOT, Pedestrian Safety (2024: 6,095 crashes involving pedestrians, 772 deaths, 1,455 serious injuries; pedestrians in one percent of crashes and 19 percent of roadway fatalities, stated without a year). General information, not legal advice.
