§ 17.062.Substituted Service on Chairman of Texas Transportation Commission

The core of the nonresident motorist scheme, and it rests on a plain proposition: driving on Texas roads carries an obligation to answer here for what happens on them.

The chairman is an agent for service of process on a person who is a nonresident or an agent of a nonresident, in any suit growing out of a collision in which the person or the person's agent is involved while operating a motor vehicle in this state.

Subsection (b) reaches the person who leaves. Process may be served on the chairman for a nonresident who was a resident at the time the cause of action accrued but has subsequently moved from the state. A Texas resident who causes a collision and then relocates is served exactly as a nonresident is.

The provision runs parallel to the general venue rule that facts are assessed when the claim accrued. Moving away changes neither where suit may be brought nor how the defendant is served.

The scheme predates the modern long-arm statute and survives alongside it. Collisions were the first situation in which states asserted jurisdiction over departed defendants, and Texas retained the specialised machinery — with its own service method, its own timing, and its own default judgment rule — rather than folding it into the general provisions.