Can Not Wearing a Seatbelt Impact My Car Accident Claim in Texas?

Legally Reviewed by Dale R. Rose, J.D. on September 22, 2026

Yes, you can still file a car accident claim in Texas even if you were not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash. Texas law does allow the other side to introduce evidence that you were unbelted, and that evidence may reduce the compensation you are awarded, but it does not automatically bar you from recovering damages. Every time a person gets into a car, buckling up is both the law and one of the simplest ways to reduce the risk of serious injury, but failing to do so does not erase your right to pursue a claim after someone else causes a wreck.

Dale R. Rose is an experienced Texas car accident lawyer who has helped victims across McKinney, Plano, Frisco, and the surrounding North Texas area file car accident claims for more than three decades. If you were not wearing a seatbelt at the time of your accident, here is what you need to know about how that fact may affect your case.

Texas’s Seatbelt Requirement Law

Under Texas Transportation Code Section 545.413, drivers and front and back seat passengers age 15 and older are generally required to wear a seatbelt while a vehicle is in motion, with limited exceptions such as a documented medical condition. Violating this law is a separate traffic offense from the accident itself, and it can also become relevant to your civil injury claim, as discussed below.

Can You File a Car Accident Claim If You Were Not Wearing a Seatbelt?

While you may have been breaking the law by not wearing a seatbelt, you still have the right to file a car accident injury claim against the driver who caused the wreck. The fact that you were not belted at the time of the accident may affect the amount of compensation you are awarded for your losses, but with the help of an experienced car accident injury attorney, you may still be able to build a strong claim.

How Texas Law Allows Evidence of Seatbelt Non-Use

After a Texas car accident, it matters whose negligence caused the crash in the first place. For decades, juries in Texas never heard whether an injured person was buckled. The Texas Supreme Court barred that evidence in 1974 in Carnation Co. v. Wong, and the Legislature later wrote a similar ban into the seatbelt statute itself. The Legislature repealed that statutory ban in 2003, and in 2015 the Texas Supreme Court overruled Carnation in Nabors Well Services, Ltd. v. Romero, 456 S.W.3d 553 (Tex. 2015). The court held that relevant evidence of seatbelt use or non-use is admissible to help a jury apportion responsibility for a plaintiff’s injuries under Texas’s proportionate responsibility statute.

This means the other party may now introduce evidence that you were not wearing a seatbelt when the crash occurred. Generally, the defense also has to show that wearing a seatbelt would have reduced the severity of your injuries, since simply proving you were unbelted is not, by itself, proof that it changed the outcome. While you did not cause the underlying accident, this evidence can still factor into the following:

• The extent to which your lack of a seatbelt contributed to the severity of your injuries.
• Whether you are found partially responsible for your own damages as a result.

Even though filing a claim under these circumstances may feel discouraging, an experienced car accident injury attorney may still be able to build you a solid claim as you pursue compensation for your losses.

What Is Comparative Negligence in Texas Car Accident Claims?

After being injured in a car accident, you may want to file a claim seeking compensation owed to you because of another driver’s negligence. Under Texas’s proportionate responsibility law, the comparative negligence process is used to determine how much your own conduct, including seatbelt non-use, contributed to your injuries. Your compensation is then reduced by that percentage, and if you are found more than 50 percent responsible, you may be barred from recovering at all.

Each accident claim is different, so it is impossible to determine an exact percentage without a full review of the facts. Our related article on comparative fault in Texas car accident cases explains this framework in more detail, and an experienced attorney can help minimize the percentage assigned to you.

How Seatbelt Non-Use Affects Your Compensation

It helps to understand that seatbelt non-use is treated as one factor among several, not an automatic reduction of a fixed size. A jury or insurance adjuster may weigh it alongside the type of collision, the injuries involved, and expert testimony about whether a seatbelt would have made a meaningful difference. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, seatbelts reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat occupants by roughly 45 percent, which is the kind of data that may be introduced to support an argument that a seatbelt would have lessened your injuries.

Because this analysis is fact-specific, the reduction applied in one case may look very different from another. This is exactly why building a thorough evidentiary record, rather than accepting an insurance company’s initial fault assessment, matters so much.

How Seatbelt Use Is Proven After a Texas Crash

Because the Nabors decision only admits seatbelt evidence that is relevant, the real fight in many cases is over proof: first whether you were belted, and then whether being unbelted actually made your injuries worse. The responding officer’s crash report records restraint use for each occupant, but that entry is often based on what the officer observed or was told after the fact, and it can be wrong. Other evidence may include data from the vehicle’s event data recorder or airbag control module, seatbelt bruising noted in emergency room records, wear marks on the belt webbing and latch, and statements from EMS crews or witnesses.

Even when non-use is clear, the defense generally needs qualified expert testimony connecting it to specific injuries, and the trial judge decides whether that evidence is reliable enough to reach the jury. In some crashes, such as severe side impacts or collisions with major cabin intrusion, a seatbelt may not have changed the outcome at all. Our guide to proving negligence in a Texas car accident claim explains how fault evidence is developed more broadly.

Passengers and Children

Seatbelt questions also come up for passengers. Under Texas law, the driver is responsible for making sure passengers younger than 17 are secured, and young children generally must ride in a child safety seat system until they are 8 years old or at least 4 feet 9 inches tall. If you were an unbelted adult passenger, your seatbelt use may be raised the same way it would be for a driver, but it does not erase a claim against the driver or drivers who caused the crash.

What Insurance Companies Look For When You Weren’t Belted

Insurance adjusters are aware that seatbelt non-use can be used to reduce a payout, and they often raise it early in settlement discussions, sometimes overstating its effect on your claim. An adjuster may point to your seatbelt status as a reason to offer a lower settlement before an accurate percentage of fault has ever been established. Reviewing any settlement offer with an attorney before accepting it helps ensure the reduction being applied is actually supported by the evidence, rather than simply asserted by the insurer.

Partner With an Experienced Car Accident Lawyer in Texas

Wearing a seatbelt is one of the best ways to keep yourself safe while riding in a motor vehicle. However, even if you were not wearing one at the time of the accident, you may still be able to pursue a case for recovery. Dale R. Rose has been helping victims of car accidents build strong injury claims since the early 1990s, and you can learn more about his background on his attorney profile or our About Us page.

For a free consultation, fill out this contact form to discuss your case with our team.

Frequently Asked Questions About Seatbelts and Texas Car Accident Claims