Orange County Texting While Driving Accident Attorneys

Cell phones are involved in an estimated 27 percent of all car crashes according to the National Safety Council. This means that more than one in four people who are injured in an accident is a victim of a driver who had been texting or talking on their phone in some capacity. Make no mistake about it, texting and driving is distracted driving.

Did you know that if you’re driving at 55 mph, it only takes 5 seconds to drive the entire length of a football field? So, if you’re texting and driving even for just a few seconds, you can cover quite a bit of ground and cause quite a bit of damage.

Statistically speaking, millennials are the most likely age group to text and drive. According to the American Automobile Association, drivers between the ages of 19 and 24 are 1.6 times as likely as all drivers to read a text while driving, and almost twice as likely to type or send a text while driving.

California Texting While Driving Laws

These are two really important California laws that govern distracted driving generally and texting while driving in particular:

• It’s illegal for California drivers to use a handheld phone to call, read, or type while operating a motor vehicle
• Drivers under the age of 18 years cannot use an electronic device while operating a motor vehicle… at all. Not even if the device is “hands-free.”

A “hands-free system” is defined as a phone that is mounted on the dashboard or windshield, and that can be activated/deactivated with a “single swipe.” So, for example, talking on the phone while it sits in your lap would technically not qualify as being “hands-free.”Luckily, most modern vehicles have the ability to use Bluetooth technology to send sound to the car’s speakers so you don’t need to install cumbersome brackets and mounts anymore.

Voice-activated dialing is another practical safety feature. Some vehicles now come with technology that will read your texts out loud to you and allow you to respond to them using voice recognition software. This reduces the likelihood that a driver will physically check their phone to read a text while they drive.

How Can I Prove a Driver Caused an Accident While Texting?

In order to collect damages from a driver that injured you because they were texting and driving, you have to prove the following four elements:

• The other driver owed you a duty of care (All drivers owe other drivers a duty of care on the road)
• The driver breached their duty of care by texting
• You were injured because of that breach (and not for some other reason)
• Now you’re injured

Although you need to prove each one of these elements, the hardest one to prove is element #2: the other driver breached their duty of care by texting while driving. It’s probably going to be your word against their word unless either (a) they admit to texting while driving to their insurance company, or (b) a police officer happens to witness it and cites them for it.

Element #3 can also cause problems sometimes. Consider this: let’s say there’s another driver on the road who he’s texting while stopped at a red light, and then you rear-end him. You’re at fault. Whether he was texting and driving is irrelevant because your injuries were caused by your inattention, not his.