Quick answer

Driverless trucks now haul freight on Texas highways, including the I-45 lane between Houston and Dallas. Texas law makes the automated driving system the vehicle’s legal operator and requires companies to hold permits for automated commercial vehicle use. The liable parties for automated commercial motor vehicle cases include the system’s developer, the carrier that put the truck in service, and remote support staff. Texas does not require any of them to report crashes to the state.

At 1:16 a.m. on April 29, 2026, a driverless Class 8 tractor pulled out of a truck yard in northeast Houston, merged onto Interstate 45, and drove 230 miles north to Hutchins. It arrived safely 3 hours later.

The run belonged to Bot Auto, a Houston company, which billed it as the first fully driverless commercial freight delivery of its kind in the United States, meaning no safety driver, no in-cab observer, and no remote human input. We’ve covered self-driving trucks before on this site, but as a technology still approaching autonomy. Automated trucks are here, and are carrying paying freight on the same Houston highways everyone else uses.

This article covers the types of autonomous vehicles operating on Texas roads in 2026, and what regulators admitted to lawmakers this month.

On This Page

Which driverless trucks are actually running on Texas highways

Three companies account for most of the driverless freight moving in Texas:

Set against ordinary trucking, those figures are still small. Texas recorded 38,533 crashes involving a commercial motor vehicle in 2025, with 528 people killed and 1,611 suspected serious injuries, according to TxDOT’s county crash file. Harris County alone accounted for 5,913 of those commercial truck crashes, 43 deaths, and 125 suspected serious injuries.

No fatal crash involving a driverless Class 8 truck has yet been publicly reported in Texas.

Back to Top

In Texas, the software is legally the driver

Under Texas Transportation Code § 545.454, when an automated driving system installed on a vehicle is engaged, the automated driving system is considered the operator of the vehicle. No licensed human driver is required. If the truck violates a traffic law, the citation goes to the vehicle’s owner, or to the authorization holder if it is running under a state authorization.

That authorization is new. Senate Bill 2807, passed in 2025, requires any company operating a Level 4 or Level 5 automated vehicle commercially to obtain authorization from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles before it can carry property or passengers. TxDMV began enforcing the requirement on May 28, 2026. To get it, a company must certify that its vehicles obey traffic laws, carry a recording device, meet federal safety standards, can reach a “minimal risk condition” if the system fails, and are registered and insured. It must also confirm that the Department of Public Safety has received a written plan explaining how police, firefighters, and paramedics should interact with the vehicle at a scene.

However, this system is not without its flaws. Naming the software as vehicle operator only settles who gets the ticket — it does not decide who pays for an injury. Civil liability is a separate question that Texas has so far avoided answering. A software system cannot be sued, cannot be insured, and has no assets. Every dollar of recovery still has to come from a company.

Back to Top

No one is required to tell the state when a driverless vehicle crashes

On August 25, 2026, the Texas Senate Transportation Committee held an interim hearing on how SB 2807 is working. That testimony produced by that hearing was stark.

TxDMV’s enforcement director, Corrie Thompson, told the committee that the department has received 42 complaints related to automated vehicle operations and has suspended or revoked no company’s authorization. Asked about crash reporting, she said the statute as written contains no mandate to report crashes to the department. In other words, there was no easy way to know if a crashed vehicle was autonomous.

State regulators learned about an August 8, 2026 fatal collision in Dallas, in which a pedestrian thrown by a separate crash was struck by an unoccupied automated vehicle, from news coverage. Senator Charles Perry told Thompson that her answer was the one that frightened him most as a legislator, and the committee is drawing on that record for the 2027 session.

NHTSA’s Standing General Order on crash reporting requires named manufacturers and operators to report crashes in which an automated driving system was engaged within 30 seconds of impact and the crash involved a death, a hospital transport, an airbag deployment, tow-away, or a struck pedestrian or cyclist. The most severe crashes are due within five days, and NHTSA publishes the reports as public data files. However, this is a secondary data source that must be connected to state-level crash data.

Back to Top

Contact UsContact Us

So who is liable if the driver is just code?

The driver is usually the first identifiable defendant for many cases, but this isn’t necessarily the case in commercial vehicle crashes. Liability for autonomous vehicle crashes can include:

  • The company that built and operates the driving system. This is the closest thing to a driver. Claims here are typically brought as product liability, meaning a design defect, a manufacturing defect, or a failure to warn, or as ordinary negligence in how the system was tested and monitored. For example: a software version that has a higher rate of incident that has not been recalled or rolled back could be considered negligent.
  • The motor carrier or authorization holder. The company that put the truck into service still owes the same duties of care as any other carrier: maintaining the vehicle, inspecting it, choosing routes and conditions it can handle, and pulling it off the road when something is wrong. None of those duties require a human behind the wheel.
  • Remote support staff. Driverless does not usually mean unwatched. Companies keep a fleet operations team monitoring vehicles in real time. This sometimes means a manual override or someone monitoring real-time output for potential warnings. Where a person could have intervened and did not, that is an operational negligence question rather than a software question.
  • The broker, shipper, or loader. A driverless truck still gets loaded and dispatched by somebody. Our article on container truck crashes near the Port of Houston shows how one trailer can involve four companies.
  • Another driver. The simple fact that a vehicle is automated does not mean that it is fault. In the Dallas fatality described to the Senate committee, the unoccupied automated vehicle was reportedly struck by a pedestrian thrown into its path by a separate collision, and early reporting did not fault the automated vehicle.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 82.005 requires a claimant in design defect cases to prove a safer alternative design, meaning one that would have prevented or significantly reduced the injury without substantially impairing the product’s usefulness, and that was economically and technologically feasible when the product left the manufacturer’s control. Applied to automated driving systems, that means that plaintiffs have to explain what the software should have done differently, with hard evidence.

But what about insurance?

Texas requires all vehicles, including automated ones, to carry liability coverage at least equal to what the law requires of the same vehicle with a person in it. Those minimums are covered in our article on commercial vehicle’s insurance limits. That analysis does not change just because the cab is empty.

Back to Top

Primary evidence moves to company servers

In an ordinary commercial truck case,  the crash record is spread across multiple parties. The driver must be deposed, logbooks examined, and the blackbox and police narrative are used to build a picture of what happened.

Automated trucks produce different records, held almost entirely by one side. Texas requires these vehicles to carry recording devices as a condition of operating, and the driving system itself logs sensor input, object detection, planned and executed maneuvers, braking and steering commands, software versions, and any remote-assistance contact. Strictly speaking, that data is more reliable than witness testimony or police narratives. The catch is that it all belongs to the responsible party.

So a written demand to preserve evidence must go out early, before routine retention schedules do their work and the data is deleted.

Back to Top

What to do after a crash involving an automated truck

  1. Call 911 and get an officer to the scene. Texas requires the vehicle, anyone acting on its behalf, and any human driver to comply with the state’s collision and reporting duties. All of the normal initial crash requirements are still relevant, including police reports, witness statements and so on.
  2. Photograph the tractor and trailer, including the door markings. You are looking for the USDOT number, the carrier name, and any autonomy branding or sensor hardware. The company that owns the truck and the company that built the driving system are frequently not the same.
  3. Do not assume that nobody was involved. Ask responding officers whether anyone was in the cab, and whether the company’s remote operations team was reached.
  4. Get medical care and keep every record. As with any crash, you must be able to enumerate and explain the medical care required for your recovery. This does not change just because the vehicle was automated.
  5. Say nothing recorded to any insurer until you understand your rights. You are under no obligation to give a recorded statement, and many agents will seek to undermine your claim before it ever gets off the ground. Speak to a lawyer first.
  6. Move quickly on the data. Most Texas injury claims must be filed within two years (Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 16.003), but the system logs that explain what happened can be gone long before that deadline arrives.

Back to Top

Frequently asked questions

If no one was driving, is anyone at fault?

Yes. Texas law names the automated driving system as the vehicle’s operator for legal purposes, but responsibility typically falls to the vehicles owner or the company company providing the automated driving system.

Does Texas track crashes involving driverless vehicles?

Not through TxDMV. The department’s enforcement director told a Senate committee in August 2026 that the statute contains no requirement to report crashes to the agency. NHTSA’s Standing General Order requires some reporting to the federal government by the companies it names, but that is a safety-research program, not a state crash database.

Are driverless trucks legal in Texas?

Yes. Texas has permitted operation without a human driver since 2017, and since May 28, 2026 a company must hold TxDMV authorization to run automated vehicles commercially. Operating without that authorization is a Class B misdemeanor.

Is the trucking company off the hook because the software was driving?

No. A carrier’s duties to maintain, inspect, and appropriately deploy its equipment do not depend on who or what is steering. Under Chapter 72, claims that do not require proving driver negligence, negligent maintenance being the clearest, are unaffected by the stipulation a defendant can make to narrow the first phase of trial.

Back to Top

Talk to a Houston truck accident lawyer

A crash with an automated truck is not a simpler case just because there is no driver to blame. The responsible parties sit further back in the chain, and the evidence identifying them belongs to the companies under question. Sorting out which company held authorization to operate autonomously, which company built the system, who was monitoring the vehicle, and what its own logs recorded is work that belongs in a truck accident claim, or in a wrongful death claim where a crash was fatal, and it starts with preserving data nobody is required to hand over voluntarily.

The Law Offices of Hilda Sibrian have served the Houston community since 2004. Hilda Sibrian serves the Houston metropolitan area, including Sugar Land, Missouri City, La Porte, Beaumont, Pasadena, The Woodlands, The Heights, Bellaire, Kingwood, Baytown and of course Houston proper.

Call our office today or fill out our online contact form for a free consultation.

Back to Top