Distracted driving crashes in California

Almost nobody admits to looking at their phone. The evidence exists anyway, and most of it sits on devices and servers that will overwrite it if nobody asks in time. That is the practical shape of a distracted driving claim: not an argument about what happened, but a race to preserve the record of it. This is general information, not legal advice.

What the hands-free law says

A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while holding and operating a handheld wireless telephone or an electronic wireless communications device unless it is specifically designed and configured to allow voice-operated and hands-free operation, and is used in that manner while driving.

Two carve-outs matter. Manufacturer-installed systems embedded in the vehicle are outside the section. And a handheld device may be operated with a hand if it is mounted on the windshield, dashboard, or centre console in a way that does not obstruct the view of the road, and the interaction is a single swipe or tap. Scrolling, typing, and holding are not that. "Electronic wireless communications device" is defined broadly and is not limited to phones.

Sources: Veh. Code, § 23123.5 (hands-free requirement; the mounted-device single swipe or tap exception; the embedded-system and emergency-services exceptions). Last amended Stats. 2017, ch. 297 (AB 1222), effective January 1, 2018.

A violation is evidence of negligence rather than an automatic answer. How that presumption works, and how it is rebutted, belongs to the claims process.

Distraction is wider than phones

The statute covers one category. The duty of care covers all of them, and a driver who was not holding a phone can still have failed to keep a proper lookout or to control the speed and movement of the vehicle. In practice the recurring ones are:

• Touchscreen infotainment — navigation entry, media, climate menus.
• Eating, drinking, smoking, and reaching for something that has fallen.
• Passengers, and particularly children or animals in the vehicle.
• Grooming, and the mirror that goes with it.
• External distraction — a prior crash, a screen, an argument on the pavement.
• Cognitive distraction, where the eyes are forward and the attention is not.

Sources: CACI No. 700 (a driver must keep a lookout for pedestrians, obstacles, and other vehicles and must control the speed and movement of the vehicle), Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions (2026 edition).

Proving it

Sources of evidence, roughly in order of how quickly they vanish:

• The vehicle's event data recorder. Pre-impact speed, throttle, and braking. An absence of braking before an obvious hazard is one of the strongest indicators of inattention there is. Data can be overwritten by later driving or lost when the vehicle is salvaged.
• Infotainment and telematics. Modern systems log phone pairing, calls routed through the vehicle, screen interaction, and sometimes navigation entry, with timestamps. Extraction usually requires the vehicle.
• Carrier records. Calls and data sessions with times. Useful, but coarse — they show a data session, not whether the driver was looking at the screen.
• The handset. Far richer than carrier records: app foreground activity, unlocks, notifications, drafts. Reached through the litigation process rather than by asking.
• Independent accounts. Witnesses who saw a driver looking down, and video from other vehicles or businesses.

The preservation demand

Most of the above disappears on an ordinary schedule, not because anyone destroyed it. Carriers keep records for limited periods. Vehicles get repaired and salvaged. Phones get replaced and wiped. A written demand to preserve, sent early to the driver, their insurer, and where appropriate the employer, is what converts "the data probably existed" into a claim that the other side had it and let it go.

Where the driver was working at the time, the employer is a second target for that demand and often the party with a policy that responds.

In a commercial vehicle the equivalent evidence is far richer: black box and ECM data · why truck cases move fast.

Common questions

What does California’s hands-free law actually prohibit?

Driving while holding and operating a handheld wireless telephone or electronic wireless communications device, unless it is designed and configured for voice-operated hands-free use and is used that way (Veh. Code, § 23123.5). A mounted device may be touched, but only with a single swipe or tap.

Is holding a phone at a red light allowed?

The prohibition applies to driving a motor vehicle, and stopped-in-traffic situations are argued both ways in enforcement. For a civil claim the question is usually different and simpler: whether the driver was paying attention to the road when it mattered.

How is phone use proved if the driver denies it?

Carrier records show calls and data sessions with timestamps. The handset itself holds far more — app activity, screen unlocks, message drafts. Vehicle infotainment systems log pairing and interaction. All of it needs to be preserved before it is deleted or overwritten, which means a written preservation demand early.

Does a citation for phone use decide the case?

No. A violation of a safety statute is evidence of negligence and creates a presumption where the harm is of the kind the law was meant to prevent, but the presumption can be rebutted and causation still has to be shown. Many distracted-driving crashes involve no citation at all.