Distracted driving

The National Safety Council estimates that as many as 40,000 people died in automobile accident crashes in

2016. That is a 6 percent increase over 2015 and a 15 percent increase over 2014. This is the most dramatic two year escalation in 53 years. The National Safety Council estimates that 25 percent of all crashes involve some type of cell phone use.

Florida has passed a distracted driving law entitled “Florida

Ban on Texting While Driving Law.” Police officers are authorized to stop motor vehicles and issue citations to persons who are texting while driving. The law provides that a driver may not operate a motor vehicle while manually typing or entering letters or numbers or other characters on any wireless communication. The law specifically exempts from its operation an operator who is performing official duties in an authorized emergency vehicle or anyone reporting an emergency or criminal or suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities.

This law does not prohibit using a device for navigation purposes or using hands-off communications that does not require reading text messages and exempts a self-driving vehicle while in the self-driving mode.

In the event of a crash resulting in death or personal injury, the billing records for a driver or other records of the phone Ted Babbitt

Babbitt and Johnson, P.A. companies or internet services of the driver can be admissible in evidence to determine whether the cell phone use was a possible causative factor in the accident.

Drivers can be ticketed on the first offense for a nonmoving violation and ticketed for a moving violation on a second or subsequent violation.

In 2011 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency,

3,331 people were killed in crashes involving distracted drivers and 387,000 were injured. According to NHTSA, 12 percent of fatalities involved the use of a cell phone and for

15- to 19-year-old drivers, 21 percent of fatal crashes involved cell phone distraction.

Lawyers who represent the injured in auto accidents caused by distracted driving do so on a contingency fee basis, meaning that they charge a percentage of recovery as their fee rather than charging an hourly fee.

Theodore Babbitt is senior partner in the law firm of Babbitt & Johnson, P.A., and is a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, which is limited to the top 100 personal injury lawyers in the United States.