How do I prove the other driver was texting during a car crash in Texas?

In Texas, you prove the other driver was texting with preserved data rather than testimony: carrier call detail records, a forensic image of the phone, and the vehicle's infotainment module. Nobody admits it at the scene, and every one of those records has a shorter life than your deadline to sue.

Start with what each source can actually give you.

Carrier records. A subpoena to the carrier produces call detail records — that a message was sent or received, the timestamp, and the number on the other end. It will not produce what the message said. The federal Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2702, bars a provider from divulging the contents of a communication, and civil discovery is not one of the statute's exceptions. Police can reach content with a warrant under § 2703. A civil plaintiff can't.

The phone. Content and app activity live on the device, so you need a forensic image, obtained either by agreement or by a court order compelling production and inspection.

The vehicle. Infotainment systems log paired-phone activity, including calls and messages. Under Transportation Code § 547.615, that recorded data belongs to the vehicle's owner, and anyone else can retrieve it only with the owner's consent or a court order.

Now the part that decides these cases, and it isn't the subpoena. It's how fast a preservation letter goes out. Under Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge, 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014), the duty to preserve attaches when a party knows or reasonably should know there is a substantial chance a claim will be filed and that the evidence will be material. A dated written demand is the cleanest way to prove they knew. But don't count on spoliation to rescue the case. Brookshire Brothers requires a finding that the party destroyed evidence with the subjective purpose of concealing it before a spoliation instruction goes to the jury at all. Negligent loss usually gets you nothing. So the letter isn't a trap you set. It's what keeps the evidence alive long enough to be worth subpoenaing.

Two more things worth knowing. Texting while driving is illegal in Texas under Transportation Code § 545.4251, but that same statute bars an officer from inspecting a driver's phone without separate legal authority, which is why the roadside investigation so rarely settles this question. And your outside deadline is two years from the crash under Civil Practice & Remedies Code § 16.003. The evidence clock runs much shorter than that.

Before law school I spent a year working as an insurance adjuster, and distracted-driving claims are where the insurer's first position and the actual record diverge most. We see that gap close only after the device data comes in.