Midland Motorcycle Crash on Andrews Highway — What Your Family Needs to Know Right Now
The phone call came and your world stopped. Someone on Andrews Highway — the road you have driven a thousand times — hit a motorcycle, and the person you love did not come home. Or they came home to a hospital bed, not a kitchen table. The passenger who survived is hurting in ways that have not fully shown themselves yet, and you are sitting in a kitchen or a hospital hallway at a time you should be sleeping, trying to understand what happens next when the worst thing has already happened.
Here is the first thing you need to hear: what happened on that road was not your fault, and Texas law gives your family real tools to hold the person who did this accountable. But the evidence that proves what happened is dying right now — some of it in days, some of it in weeks — and the at-fault driver’s insurance company has already opened a file and started building its defense. The two things you cannot get back are time and proof, and the insurance company is counting on you losing both.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle motorcycle crash and wrongful death cases. Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their valuation software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — and now sits on your side of the table. We work in English or Spanish. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win.
Now let us tell you what your family is actually facing — the law, the evidence, the money, the medicine, and the playbook the insurance company is already running against you.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Two Separate Claims, One Clock Already Running
Texas law gives your family two distinct legal claims when someone is killed in a crash, and the difference between them is something the insurance company hopes you never learn.
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family — the spouse, the children, and the parents of the person who was killed. It compensates the family for what they lost: the financial support the person would have provided, the care and guidance, the companionship, the love that was taken. In Texas, wrongful death beneficiaries are defined by statute, and the hierarchy matters — spouse and children first, then parents. If the person who died had no spouse, no children, and no surviving parents, the estate’s personal representative can sometimes bring the claim, but that is a narrower path that must be handled precisely.
A survival claim belongs to the estate of the person who died. It is separate from wrongful death, and it is often missed by families and by generalist lawyers. The survival claim carries forward the claim the deceased person would have had — the pain and suffering they experienced between the injury and death, the medical bills incurred before they died, and the funeral costs. On a motorcycle crash where the rider was killed, the survival claim can carry real weight — particularly if there was a period of conscious suffering before death. That suffering has a dollar value in Texas courtrooms, and leaving it on the table is leaving money the family was entitled to.
Both claims in Texas are governed by a two-year statute of limitations. The clock starts on the date of the crash — the date of injury, not the date of death. If the person lived for days or weeks after the crash before succumbing to their injuries, the clock still started on the day of the crash. This is a hard deadline. Miss it and the case is over, no matter how strong the evidence is, no matter how clear the fault. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing in a hospital hallway. It is not. The first year is consumed by grief, medical treatment, estate administration, and the insurance company’s delay tactics. The second year is consumed by litigation preparation. The time vanishes.
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. If the person killed was 50% or less at fault, the family can recover — reduced by the decedent’s percentage of fault. If the decedent was 51% or more at fault, the family recovers nothing. Every percentage point the insurance company assigns to the rider is money off their payout.
That principle is the single most important thing to understand about a motorcycle wrongful death in Texas. The insurance company’s entire strategy in a motorcycle case is to push the rider’s percentage of fault above 50% — because at 51%, they pay nothing. They will argue speeding. They will argue lane position. They will argue failure to wear a helmet, even though Texas does not require helmets for riders 21 and older who meet certain conditions. They will argue the motorcycle was hard to see — the “SMIDSY” defense, “Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You” — as if a driver’s failure to look is the motorcyclist’s fault. Every one of those arguments is a percentage point, and every percentage point is money out of your family’s recovery.
This is why the wrongful death claim is not just about filing paperwork. It is about fighting a battle over percentages that the other side started fighting the day of the crash.
The Passenger Has Their Own Case — and It May Involve More Than One Defendant
If you are the passenger who survived, or you are reading this for a family member who was the passenger, you need to know something that most people do not learn until it is too late: the passenger has their own claim, and it may point in more than one direction.
The passenger’s injury claim is against whoever was at fault for the crash. If the at-fault party was the driver of another vehicle — a car, a truck, an oilfield hauler — the passenger sues that driver and their insurance company. But if the motorcyclist who was riding contributed to the crash — through speed, unsafe lane change, or any other error — the passenger also has a claim against the motorcyclist’s estate and the motorcyclist’s insurance policy. This is not about blaming the rider. It is about the law recognizing that the passenger is an innocent victim who deserves full compensation from every party whose actions contributed to the harm.
The generalist lawyer who only looks at the other vehicle misses the motorcyclist’s coverage. The generalist who only looks at the motorcycle misses the other vehicle’s coverage — and if that other vehicle was a commercial truck, the coverage may be dramatically larger. The passenger’s claim is a matrix, not a line — it runs to every at-fault party, and each one has a separate insurance tower.
In Texas, the passenger’s claim is also subject to the two-year statute of limitations, and the passenger is not subject to the 51% bar in the same way — because the passenger was not driving. The passenger’s own fault (if any) is compared, but an innocent passenger starts at zero percent, which means the full recovery is available from every at-fault party.
Andrews Highway and Midland: The Permian Basin Traffic Reality
Andrews Highway is one of Midland’s major arteries — a road that carries the full weight of this city’s traffic, and this city’s economy. Midland sits in the heart of the Permian Basin, and the roads here carry a mix that most American cities never see: daily commuter traffic alongside heavy oilfield trucks, water haulers, frac sand transporters, and commercial vehicles running on schedules set by drilling cycles and production targets. Andrews Highway is where those worlds meet, and a motorcycle has no margin for error in that environment.
The physics of a motorcycle crash on a highway like Andrews are brutal and unforgiving in ways that a car crash is not. A car has a crumple zone, a roof, airbags, seatbelts, and a steel cage. A motorcycle has none of those things. On a motorcycle, the rider’s body is the crumple zone. When a vehicle turns across a motorcycle’s path, or changes lanes into it, or rear-ends it at a traffic light, the energy of the collision is transferred directly to the human body — there is nothing between the rider and the impact except clothing and bone. The rider is typically ejected from the motorcycle and becomes a projectile, traveling at whatever speed the motorcycle was moving until they hit the ground, a guardrail, another vehicle, or the road itself.
In the Permian Basin, the danger is compounded by oilfield traffic patterns. Shift changes send convoys of tired workers onto the highways at dawn and dusk. Water haulers and sand trucks run routes that take them through Midland’s commercial corridors. Commercial trucks on these Permian Basin corridors operate under federal safety regulations that govern hours of service, driver qualifications, and vehicle maintenance — and when those rules are broken and a motorcycle is in the path, the result is what happened on Andrews Highway.
We do not know yet whether a commercial vehicle was involved in this specific crash. But in Midland, the possibility is always present, and it changes the entire case if it is — because a commercial vehicle brings federal regulations, larger insurance towers, and corporate defendants who will immediately deploy their own investigators.
The Evidence Is Dying Right Now — What Exists, Who Holds It, How Fast It Disappears
This is the section the insurance company does not want you to read. Every piece of evidence that proves what happened on Andrews Highway is on a clock, and the clock is already running.
The crashed vehicles. The motorcycle and whatever vehicle hit it are the single most important physical evidence in the case. The motorcycle’s damage pattern tells a reconstruction engineer the angle of impact, the speed, the forces involved. The other vehicle’s damage — the paint transfer, the dents, the broken glass — tells whether the driver braked, how fast they were going, and where the point of impact was. But vehicles in Midland get towed to impound lots where storage fees accrue daily, and insurance companies will authorize repair or salvage within days if no one has told them to stop. A preservation letter — a formal demand that the vehicles be held unchanged — is what freezes that process. Without it, the evidence can be crushed, repaired, or sold before anyone has photographed it properly.
The at-fault vehicle’s event data recorder (EDR). If the at-fault vehicle was a modern car or light truck, it carries a black box — an event data recorder that, under federal regulation, captures the seconds before and during a crash: vehicle speed, brake application, throttle position, seatbelt status, and the change in velocity at impact. If the airbags deployed, federal law requires that recording to be locked so it cannot be overwritten. But if the airbags did not deploy, the data can be erased the next time the vehicle is driven hard. If the vehicle is repaired or scrapped, the data dies with it. The EDR is the at-fault driver’s sworn confession in numbers — and it has to be pulled before it is gone.
If a commercial truck was involved — the electronic logging data. Commercial trucks carry engine control modules that record speed, hard braking events, and last-stop data — and the data overwrites itself when the truck is driven away. The driver’s hours-of-service logs — the records that show whether the driver had been awake too long — are only required to be kept for six months under federal law. After that, the company can legally destroy them. If an oilfield truck was involved on Andrews Highway, the federal record-retention clock is ticking, and the evidence that proves a fatigued driver is on a six-month fuse.
The crash scene itself. Skid marks, scrape marks from the motorcycle sliding on the pavement, fluid deposits, debris patterns, and the final resting positions of the vehicles — all of this tells the story of what happened. But Andrews Highway is a busy road. The scene gets cleaned up within hours. The police take photographs and measurements, but they are working from a crash-report template, not from litigation-grade documentation. Unless someone photographs the scene comprehensively before the traffic resumes, the physical proof is gone in a day.
The police crash report. In Texas, the investigating agency (Midland Police Department or the Texas Department of Public Safety, depending on jurisdiction) will prepare a crash report — in Texas, this is the CR-3 form. The report will include the officer’s assessment of factors contributing to the crash, a diagram, and witness information. But the officer’s opinion about fault is not binding on your case — it is one piece of evidence, and it can be wrong. The report typically takes 5–10 business days to become available, and it should be pulled immediately when it is ready.
Witness statements. People who saw the crash will tell a lawyer or an investigator what they saw. But memory degrades fast — within days, the details blur, and within weeks, a witness who clearly saw the at-fault driver run a red light may no longer be certain. Witness identities are captured in the police report, but witnesses move, change phone numbers, and become harder to find every day. The sooner they are interviewed, the more reliable their account.
Surveillance and dashcam footage. Andrews Highway is a commercial corridor. Businesses along the route may have exterior cameras that captured the crash. Nearby vehicles may have dashcams. But business surveillance footage typically overwrites on a rolling 7-to-30-day loop. No one is going to save it for you. A preservation letter to every business within camera range of the crash site is the only way to freeze that evidence before the loop erases it.
This is why the first thing a motorcycle crash lawyer does — the day the family calls — is send preservation letters. To the at-fault driver’s insurance company, ordering them to freeze the vehicle and all data. To the tow yard, ordering them not to release or scrap the motorcycle. To every business near the crash scene, asking them to preserve camera footage. To the police department, requesting the crash report and all body-camera footage from responding officers. Every letter is a race against a clock the other side set the moment the crash happened.
The Medicine of a Motorcycle Crash: What Happened to the Rider and the Passenger
A motorcycle crash does not produce a single injury. It produces polytrauma — multiple severe injuries happening simultaneously to a body that has no protection from the forces involved.
The reconstruction engineer’s view: when a motorcycle collides with a vehicle on Andrews Highway at posted speeds, the rider is typically separated from the motorcycle and launched forward. The body undergoes a rapid deceleration when it strikes the vehicle, the road, or a stationary object. The forces are enormous — a 180-pound rider ejected at 45 miles per hour carries roughly the same kinetic energy as a fall from a four-story building. The body absorbs that energy through whatever part of it hits first — head, shoulders, torso, legs — and the energy that is not absorbed by the first impact is transmitted through the body as it tumbles and slides.
The trauma surgeon’s view: the signature injuries of a motorcycle crash are a constellation, not a single wound.
Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death in motorcycle crashes, even when the rider was wearing a helmet. A helmet protects against skull fracture and absorbs some impact energy, but it cannot prevent the brain from moving inside the skull. When the head strikes the pavement or a vehicle, the brain undergoes coup-contrecoup injury — slamming against the skull on the side of impact, then against the opposite side as the head rebounds. Diffuse axonal injury — the tearing of the brain’s white-matter tracts from rotational forces — can be devastating and is often invisible on a standard CT scan. A rider who was talking at the scene can still have a severe brain injury that only reveals itself over the following days. A “mild” traumatic brain injury can leave a survivor with permanent cognitive deficits — memory loss, personality change, inability to work — even when the initial scan looked clean. Roughly one in seven people with a so-called mild brain injury never fully recovers.
Spinal cord injury occurs when the forces of the crash fracture or dislocate vertebrae, driving bone fragments into the spinal cord. The cord does not need to be severed for paralysis to result — bruising and swelling alone can shut down function below the injury level. A cervical spine injury can mean quadriplegia — loss of movement and sensation in all four limbs, loss of bowel and bladder control, loss of the ability to breathe without assistance. The lifetime cost of care for a high cervical spinal cord injury, measured by the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, runs into the millions of dollars — and that figure deliberately excludes every lost paycheck the injured person will never earn.
Internal organ damage and bleeding is the silent killer. The spleen, liver, kidneys, and bowel can rupture on impact, and the bleeding may not be immediately apparent. A rider who walked away from the crash can collapse hours later from internal hemorrhage. The golden hour — the first sixty minutes after a major trauma — is when the outcome is decided, and in Midland, that hour may include a helicopter flight to a higher-level trauma center, because the nearest Level I trauma center is not in Midland. Those flight minutes are part of the medical story and part of the case.
Road rash sounds minor. It is not. High-speed road rash is a degloving injury — the skin and underlying tissue are scraped away by friction with the pavement, producing an injury that is medically equivalent to a severe burn. The raw surfaces are open to infection, require painful debridement and skin grafting, and leave permanent scarring that tightens over joints and limits movement. In a motorcycle crash at highway speed, road rash can cover large percentages of the body and can be fatal through infection and fluid loss, just like a burn.
Amputation and crush injuries occur when the motorcycle lands on the rider’s limb, or when the limb is pinned between the motorcycle and another vehicle. The crush syndrome that follows — muscle cells rupturing and flooding the bloodstream with potassium and myoglobin — can cause kidney failure and cardiac arrhythmia. A limb that appears salvageable at the scene may require amputation days later when the tissue dies.
For the passenger who survived: the same forces that killed the rider acted on the passenger’s body. The passenger’s injuries may be different — different impact angle, different point of contact — but they are likely to be severe. The passenger’s medical records, from the first EMS run sheet through every imaging study and operative report, are the foundation of their claim. Those records need to be assembled completely and preserved, because the defense will look for gaps and pre-existing conditions to exploit.
The Money: Insurance Coverage in Texas and What Your Case Is Actually Worth
Texas is a tort state — it is not a no-fault state. That means the at-fault driver’s insurance is the first source of compensation, and the at-fault driver’s insurance company is who you are dealing with from day one.
Texas minimum auto insurance is 30/60/25: $30,000 per person for bodily injury, $60,000 per incident (no matter how many people are hurt), and $25,000 for property damage. One night in a trauma ICU can burn through $30,000 before sunrise. A motorcycle crash that kills one person and injures another can exhaust the $60,000 per-incident cap before either victim is fully treated. The minimum is a floor, not a ceiling — but many drivers on Texas roads carry only the minimum, and some carry none at all.
If the at-fault driver carried only the minimum, your family may be looking at $30,000 for the wrongful death of a loved one and a share of the remaining $30,000 for the injured passenger. That is a fraction of what a human life is worth, and it is why a competent lawyer immediately investigates every possible source of coverage — the at-fault driver’s primary policy, any excess or umbrella policy stacked above it, the at-fault vehicle owner’s separate policy if the driver was not the owner, and the motorcycle’s own insurance if it carried coverage.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage is the safety net that most families do not know they have. If the at-fault driver was uninsured or underinsured — meaning their coverage was not enough to pay for the harm they caused — the family’s own auto insurance policy (or the motorcycle’s policy, if it carried UM/UIM) can step in and pay the difference, up to the policy limits. Texas requires insurers to offer UM/UIM coverage, and unless the policyholder signed a written rejection, the coverage is in force. Many families are sitting on UM/UIM coverage they do not know about, and the insurance company is not going to volunteer that information.
If a commercial vehicle was involved, the coverage picture changes entirely. A for-hire interstate carrier of non-hazardous property is federally required to carry at least $750,000 in liability coverage — and oilfield haulers, hazmat carriers, and passenger carriers face even higher federal minimums. A single commercial truck crash can have a coverage tower of $1 million, $5 million, or more — primary coverage, excess layers, and umbrella policies stacked on top of each other. The same crash that produces $30,000 in coverage against a private driver can produce $5 million against a commercial carrier. Identifying whether a commercial vehicle was involved, and tracing the full coverage tower, is part of the investigation that starts the day you call.
What your case is worth depends on factors no honest lawyer can promise you over a phone call. For the wrongful death of the motorcyclist: the person’s age, earning capacity, the financial support they provided to their family, their health and life expectancy, the pain and suffering they experienced before death, the loss of companionship and guidance to their children, the funeral costs. For the injured passenger: the severity of their injuries, the past and future medical bills, the lost wages and lost earning capacity, the permanent impairment, the pain and suffering, the disfigurement. Texas does not cap non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of companionship) in motor vehicle crash cases — those caps exist in medical malpractice, not in a highway death. The full measure of human loss is recoverable.
The firm’s verified results include a $5M+ brain-injury settlement, a $3.8M+ amputation settlement, and a $2.5M+ truck-crash recovery. Those are not promises about your case — past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But they tell you the firm has been in the rooms where these numbers are discussed, has built the life-care plans and the economic models that produce them, and knows what the insurance company’s software is calculating before the adjuster makes the first offer.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Are Doing Right Now and How to Counter Each Move
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where claims like yours are priced. Here is what the adjuster is doing right now — and here is the counter to each play.
Play 1: The friendly “just checking in” call. Within days of the crash, someone from the at-fault driver’s insurance company will call the family or the injured passenger. The voice will be warm, sympathetic, concerned. They will ask how everyone is doing. They will say they “just need to get a statement” or “just need to understand what happened.” This call is recorded. Everything you say will be transcribed and used against you. If you say “I think the rider might have been going a little fast,” that becomes a comparative-fault admission. If you say “I’m feeling okay,” that becomes a pre-existing-condition argument when the real injuries surface weeks later. The counter: do not take the call. Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Not now, not ever. Anything you say will be turned into a weapon. Let your lawyer do the talking.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. The adjuster may offer a quick payout — sometimes within weeks — that looks like real money to a family drowning in funeral costs and medical bills. The check comes with a release form. Once you sign the release, the case is over. Closed. Forever. The insurance company knows that the full extent of a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury may not be diagnosed for months. They know that the injured passenger may need surgeries that have not been scheduled yet. They know that the family has not yet calculated the lifetime earning loss. They are offering you a fraction of what the case is worth, before you know what the case is worth, because they know that grief and financial pressure make people sign things. The counter: never sign a release without a lawyer reviewing it. A settlement that looks generous today may be a fraction of what your family needs in two years.
Play 3: The “shared fault” argument. The adjuster will begin building a narrative that the motorcyclist was partly or mostly at fault. The motorcycle was speeding. The motorcycle was in the driver’s blind spot. The rider was not wearing protective gear. The motorcycle changed lanes unsafely. In Texas, with the 51% bar, this is not just a defense — it is a complete bar to recovery if they can push the rider’s fault above 50%. The counter: the crash reconstruction, the EDR data from the at-fault vehicle, the physical evidence at the scene, the witness statements, the police report — all of these must be assembled and deployed to show the jury what actually happened. A driver who turned left across a motorcycle’s path, or who changed lanes into a motorcycle they “didn’t see,” is at fault under Texas law regardless of what the motorcycle was doing — because the duty to look and to yield is the driver’s duty.
Play 4: The independent medical examination (IME). The insurance company will send the injured passenger to a doctor of their choosing — a doctor who makes a living examining injured people for insurance companies and finding that they are not as hurt as they claim. This doctor will write a report saying the injuries are pre-existing, or minor, or that the treatment was unnecessary. The counter: the treating physician’s records — the actual doctors who treated the passenger in the ER, in the ICU, in surgery — are the authoritative medical evidence. The IME is a purchased opinion, and a competent lawyer knows how to expose that in deposition.
Play 5: Social media and surveillance. The insurance company will monitor the family’s and the injured passenger’s social media accounts. A photograph of the passenger smiling at a family event will be presented as proof that they are “not really injured.” A post about the crash will be scoured for admissions. In serious cases, the insurance company may conduct physical surveillance — filming the injured person from a parked car to catch them doing something that looks inconsistent with their claimed injuries. The counter: after a crash, assume you are being watched. Do not post about the crash, your injuries, your activities, or your recovery on social media. Set everything to private. Do not accept friend requests from people you do not know. This is not paranoia — it is standard insurance-company practice.
Play 6: The “we need more time” delay. The adjuster will string the claim along for months, asking for more documentation, more medical records, more time to “evaluate” the claim. Every month that passes is a month closer to the statute of limitations, and the insurance company knows that families who are running out of time accept less money. The counter: a lawyer who has filed the case and set it on the litigation timeline takes the power of delay out of the adjuster’s hands. Once a lawsuit is filed, the court’s schedule — not the adjuster’s — controls the timeline.
Why you need a lawyer after a crash — and how to fight big insurance is not a slogan. It is the recognition that the insurance company’s entire business model is to collect premiums and pay out less than the claims are worth, and every play above is part of that model.
How a Motorcycle Crash Case Is Actually Built: From Preservation to Verdict
Here is the chronological walk of how a case like this is built — not in summary, but in the sequence a trial team actually lives it.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. The day the family calls, letters go to the at-fault driver’s insurance company (ordering them to preserve the vehicle and all EDR data), to the tow yard (ordering them not to release or scrap the motorcycle), to every business within camera range of the crash scene on Andrews Highway (asking them to preserve surveillance footage), and to the investigating agency (requesting the crash report, body-camera footage, and all scene photographs). Every letter is a race against a clock that is already running.
Weeks two through four: the evidence download. The crash report arrives. The at-fault vehicle’s EDR is imaged — if it has not already been repaired or destroyed. The motorcycle is photographed from every angle by a forensic photographer or a crash reconstructionist. The scene is measured and documented — skid mark lengths, sight lines, traffic signal timing, speed limit signage. Witnesses are located and interviewed while their memories are fresh. The at-fault driver’s insurance coverage is traced — primary, excess, umbrella, UM/UIM — to build the coverage map.
Months two through six: the medical picture develops. For the injured passenger, the full extent of injuries declares itself over time. Traumatic brain injuries that were invisible on the initial CT become apparent through neuropsychological testing. Spinal injuries that initially seemed stable may worsen. Road rash may require multiple surgeries. The life-care plan — a formal document, built to a published professional standard, that projects every medical cost the injured person will face for the rest of their life — begins to take shape. The economist begins building the lost-earnings model, using federal labor data to project what the deceased or the injured person would have earned across their working life.
Months six through twelve: discovery and depositions. If the case is in litigation, the at-fault driver is deposed under oath. The questions cover everything: where they were going, how fast they were driving, whether they saw the motorcycle, whether they were on their phone, whether they had been drinking, whether they had slept. If a commercial vehicle was involved, the safety director and the driver’s supervisor are deposed about the company’s hiring, training, and supervision practices. The company’s own records — driver qualification files, hours-of-service logs, vehicle maintenance records — are produced and examined for violations.
The number at the end is built from all of it. The medical bills, the life-care plan, the lost-earnings projection, the pain and suffering, the loss of companionship, the funeral costs, the conscious pain and suffering of the deceased before death — every dollar is traced to a document, a record, an expert opinion. The adjuster’s first offer is a fraction of that number. The trial is where the full number is presented to twelve people from the community — from Midland County, from the families who drive Andrews Highway themselves — who decide what a life was worth and what a survivor’s future costs.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do, What Not to Do, What Not to Sign
Do get medical treatment immediately. Even if the injured passenger feels “okay,” go to the hospital. Internal bleeding, traumatic brain injury, and spinal injury can present subtly in the first hours and become catastrophic later. The medical record from the first hours is also the most powerful evidence that the injuries were caused by the crash, not by something that happened weeks later.
Do not give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Not today, not this week, not ever. The adjuster’s job is to get you to say something they can use. Your job is to say nothing until you have a lawyer.
Do not sign anything from any insurance company. Not a medical authorization, not a release, not a settlement offer. These documents are designed to close your case for a fraction of its value or to give the insurance company access to your complete medical history — which they will comb for pre-existing conditions to blame your injuries on.
Do not post about the crash on social media. No photographs, no comments, no updates. Assume the insurance company is watching your accounts. A photograph of the passenger at a family gathering will be used to argue they are not injured. A comment about the crash will be scoured for admissions. Set all accounts to private and do not accept new friend requests.
Do preserve everything. Save the motorcyclist’s helmet, jacket, gloves, boots, and anything they were wearing — these items carry impact evidence. Photograph the motorcycle before it is moved from the tow yard. Photograph the injured passenger’s injuries on a schedule — every day, then every week — to document the progression of healing and scarring. Save every medical bill, every prescription receipt, every document from the hospital.
Do call a lawyer. The preservation letters that freeze the evidence before it disappears — those letters go out the day you call. The coverage investigation that finds every available insurance policy — that investigation starts the day you call. The crash reconstructionist who documents the scene before the skid marks fade — that expert is hired the day you call. Every day you wait is a day the insurance company is ahead of you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of the crash. Texas law sets a two-year statute of limitations for both wrongful death claims and personal injury claims, and the clock starts on the date of the injury — not the date of death. If the rider lived for days or weeks after the crash before dying, the clock still started on the day of the crash. This is a hard deadline. Missing it ends the case permanently, regardless of how strong the evidence is or how clear the fault.
The passenger who survived — do they have their own case?
Yes. The passenger has an independent personal injury claim against every party whose negligence contributed to the crash. If the at-fault driver of another vehicle caused the crash, the passenger sues that driver. If the motorcyclist contributed to the crash, the passenger may also have a claim against the motorcyclist’s estate and insurance. The passenger is an innocent victim in the eyes of the law — they were not driving, they were not in control, and their recovery is not barred by the rider’s percentage of fault. The passenger’s claim is separate from the wrongful death claim and has its own damages: medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, permanent injury, and future medical care.
What if the at-fault driver only has minimum insurance?
Texas minimum auto insurance is $30,000 per person and $60,000 per incident. A motorcycle crash that kills one person and injures another can exhaust the $60,000 per-incident limit before either victim is fully compensated. But the minimum is only the first layer. A competent lawyer investigates every possible source of coverage: the at-fault driver’s primary policy, any excess or umbrella policy, the vehicle owner’s separate policy if the driver was not the owner, and UM/UIM coverage from the family’s own auto or motorcycle policy. Many families are sitting on UM/UIM coverage they do not know about — coverage that pays the difference between the at-fault driver’s limits and the full value of the claim.
Does it matter if the rider was not wearing a helmet?
Texas does not require helmets for motorcycle operators 21 and older who have completed a rider training course or carry adequate health insurance. The defense may still try to argue that not wearing a helmet contributed to the rider’s injuries — but that argument must be supported by medical evidence proving that a helmet would have prevented or reduced the specific injury, and the burden is on the defense to prove it. A rider killed by internal organ damage or a spinal cord injury was not saved by a helmet, and the defense cannot use the absence of a helmet to reduce recovery for those injuries. This is a fight a competent lawyer is prepared to have.
Can we still recover if the motorcycle was partly at fault?
Yes — up to a point. Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. If the rider was 50% or less at fault, the family can recover, but the recovery is reduced by the rider’s percentage. If the rider was 51% or more at fault, the family recovers nothing. This is why the insurance company works so hard to pin fault on the motorcyclist — every percentage point is money off their payout, and getting above 50% means they pay nothing at all. The fight over percentages is the fight over the entire case, and it is won with the crash reconstruction, the physical evidence, the witness statements, and the at-fault driver’s own driving record and conduct.
What evidence disappears fastest after a motorcycle crash?
The fastest-dying evidence is surveillance footage from businesses near the crash scene — typically overwritten on a 7-to-30-day loop. Next is the at-fault vehicle’s event data recorder, which can be erased if the vehicle is driven or destroyed if it is repaired or scrapped. The crash scene itself — skid marks, debris, fluid deposits — is cleaned up within hours. Witness memories degrade within days and weeks. The motorcycle itself accrues storage fees at the tow yard and can be salvaged if no one has ordered it preserved. A preservation letter sent the day you call freezes all of this. A preservation letter sent a month later may be too late for half of it.
What if an oilfield truck was involved in the crash on Andrews Highway?
If a commercial vehicle was involved, the case changes significantly. Commercial carriers carry higher insurance limits — at minimum $750,000 for a for-hire interstate property carrier under federal law, and more for hazmat or passenger carriers. The carrier is subject to federal safety regulations governing driver hours, vehicle maintenance, and driver qualifications. If the driver was fatigued, or the truck was poorly maintained, or the company failed to properly vet the driver, those violations are evidence of negligence — and the corporate defendant behind the truck has assets and insurance that a private driver does not. In Midland, where oilfield traffic is constant on roads like Andrews Highway, the commercial vehicle possibility is always present and always investigated.
How much does a wrongful death lawyer cost?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. We advance the costs of investigation — the crash reconstruction, the medical record collection, the expert witnesses — and those costs are repaid from the recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our time. This is not a courtesy — it is how we ensure that every family, regardless of their financial situation, has access to the same quality of legal representation that the insurance company has.
How long does a motorcycle wrongful death case take?
A case that settles can resolve in six to eighteen months. A case that goes to trial typically takes eighteen months to three years from the date of filing. The timeline depends on the complexity of the investigation, the severity of the injuries, the willingness of the insurance company to negotiate honestly, and the court’s docket. The insurance company’s delay tactics are designed to push the case toward the statute of limitations — a filed lawsuit with a trial setting takes the timeline out of the adjuster’s hands and puts it in the court’s.
What should our family do right now, in the first 72 hours?
Get medical treatment for anyone who was injured. Do not speak to the at-fault driver’s insurance company. Do not sign anything. Do not post on social media. Preserve the motorcycle, the rider’s gear, and every medical document. Photograph the injured passenger’s injuries. And call a lawyer — today, not next week — so the preservation letters go out before the evidence disappears. The call is free. The advice is real. And the clock is already running.
Who We Are and Why That Matters to Your Family
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms — Texas state courts and federal court, including the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he writes the way a jury reads and he investigates the way a story demands — every fact checked, every claim sourced, every argument airtight. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He has tried cases involving catastrophic injury and wrongful death for more than two decades. He handles the wrongful death claims that arise when a family loses someone on a Texas road.
Lupe Peña is the advantage your family has that most families do not. Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm — the side of the table where claims are valued using software like Colossus, where IME doctors are selected for their willingness to minimize injuries, where surveillance is authorized and recorded statements are engineered, and where the entire process is designed to pay the family less than the claim is worth. Lupe knows how the adjuster sets the reserve in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement script is designed to elicit admissions, and where the insurance company’s tactics cross the line into statutory bad faith. He now uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
The firm has recovered $50,000,000+ in aggregate — a marketing figure, not a single case. The verified results include a $5M+ brain-injury settlement, a $3.8M+ amputation settlement, a $2.5M+ truck-crash recovery, and a $2M+ maritime back-injury settlement. The firm is currently lead counsel in the active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the record tells you these are lawyers who have been in the rooms where serious money is discussed and who know how to build the proof that gets a family there.
We are based in Houston and take commercial-vehicle, catastrophic-injury, and wrongful-death cases across Texas — working with local counsel or pro hac vice where required. We do not claim an office in Midland. We do claim the resources, the experience, and the insider knowledge to handle a motorcycle wrongful death on Andrews Highway as powerfully as we would handle it in our own backyard.
If You Are Reading This at 2am
You started reading this because someone you love was killed or injured on Andrews Highway. You are probably exhausted. You are probably angry. You may be frightened about the medical bills, the funeral costs, the income that just stopped, the future that just changed. And you may be wondering whether calling a lawyer is something you can afford to do right now, when everything already feels unaffordable.
The consultation is free. The call costs nothing. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And the first thing we do — the day you call — is send the letters that freeze the evidence before it disappears. The at-fault driver’s insurance company has already started. The evidence is already dying. The clock is already running.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español — we serve your family fully in Spanish.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.