Indianapolis Texting-While-Driving Lawyer

Almost nobody admits to texting after a crash, and Indiana law makes it difficult for the responding officer to prove otherwise. A police officer cannot confiscate a phone or extract data from it to check compliance with the hands-free law without consent or probable cause tied to a separate crime. That is why so many of these collisions end up written down as following too closely. Christie Bell & Marshall treats the phone as evidence to be obtained rather than a fact to be conceded, and our Indianapolis distracted driving lawyers go after the carrier records and the vehicle data in the first weeks.

Proving what the other driver was doing changes the case twice over: it establishes the breach, and it moves your own fault percentage down under Indiana’s comparative fault rule. A free consultation costs nothing, carries no obligation, and there is no fee unless we recover for you.

How Our Indianapolis Texting-While-Driving Lawyers Build Your Case

Phone evidence has the shortest life of anything in a car accident file. CBM moves on it before the retention schedule does.

• We send a preservation letter and subpoena the carrier records. Wireless carriers hold detailed call, text, and data logs on retention schedules that generally run from a few months to about a year, and the cell site and data records that show what a phone was actually doing at the moment of impact often age out sooner.
• We pull the phone’s own device data through discovery. Screen state, app activity, and message timestamps live on the handset and in the cloud backup, and a civil subpoena reaches what a roadside stop could not.
• We download the event data recorder from both vehicles. A driver who never touched the brakes was not watching the road, and pre-impact speed, throttle position, and brake application come from the vehicle rather than from the driver’s account.
• We sync the infotainment and telematics log. Many vehicles record Bluetooth pairing, message notifications read aloud, and screen interactions, which corroborates the carrier data independently.
• We collect corridor and dashcam video fast. Nearby businesses, transit vehicles, and residential cameras record the approach and typically overwrite within days.
• We get the crash report and any citation from IMPD. A citation under Indiana’s hands-free law, or for following too closely or failing to yield, is documented proof of a breached duty.
• We handle the adjuster from the first call. Knowing what to do when an insurance adjuster calls after an Indianapolis crash protects your claim before anyone has valued it.

Serious injury is all we do, and that focus is what lets our team pursue carrier subpoenas and vehicle downloads that a general practice firm would never request. When you are ready to talk it through, the case review is free.

Speak with a personal injury lawyer today. Call: 317-488-5500

Why Texting Is the Most Dangerous Distraction

Texting is the only common distraction that takes a driver’s eyes, hands, and attention at the same time. NHTSA frames the scale of it plainly: sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for five seconds, which at 55 miles per hour covers the length of a football field.

The national toll is well documented. NHTSA recorded 3,208 people killed and 315,167 injured in crashes involving distracted drivers in 2024. IIHS research on distracted driving puts those deaths at 8 percent of all crash deaths, with 437 tied specifically to cellphone use, and notes that naturalistic driving studies consistently find crash risk two to six times greater when a driver is manipulating a phone than when they are not distracted.

Indiana’s reported numbers show why those figures understate the problem. The Indiana Crash Facts report published by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute and the Indiana University Public Policy Institute counted 200,035 collisions statewide in 2024. Distraction of any type was coded in 5.0 percent of them, and cellphone distraction specifically in just 0.6 percent. Nobody believes six-tenths of one percent is the real rate. It is the rate at which drivers volunteer the admission at the roadside, which is exactly the gap that carrier records close.

The behaviors behind those crashes are consistent:

• Reading or sending a message at a green light or on approach to one, which produces the rear-end and intersection collisions that make up so much of this caseload.
• Typing while merging or changing lanes, where a two-second glance is enough to erase the mirror check entirely.
• Reaching for a dropped phone, which combines a manual distraction with a driver whose eyes have left the road completely.
• Handling navigation or streaming apps, which the hands-free law treats no differently than a text message.
• Commercial drivers under dispatch pressure, where a company’s messaging practices can put the employer’s policy and its own negligence into the claim alongside a truck accident case.
• Younger drivers, for whom device use carries additional licensing restrictions and additional evidentiary value.

When a texting driver caused your injuries, CBM builds the record that proves it rather than accepting the version written at the scene.

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Indiana Law and Texting While Driving

Indiana gave these claims a clear statutory hook, and using it well is most of the work.

• Indiana is a hands-free state. Indiana Code 9-21-8-59 prohibits holding or using a telecommunications device while operating a moving motor vehicle, except through hands-free or voice-operated technology or to call 911 about a genuine emergency. The Indiana Criminal Justice Institute records that the law took effect July 1, 2020, making Indiana the 22nd state to adopt one, and that a violation is a Class C infraction carrying fines up to $500 along with points against the license.
• A statutory violation is evidence of a breach. A crash that follows a hands-free violation is not merely a traffic matter. It is proof the driver ignored a duty the legislature wrote to protect everyone else on the road.
• The rest of the rules of the road still apply. Indiana Code 9-21-8 governs following distance, lane use, and the duty to yield, and a distracted driver almost always breaches one of those as well.
• Police access to the phone is limited, but civil discovery is not. An officer may not confiscate a device to check compliance or extract data from it absent consent or probable cause tied to a crime. A civil subpoena to the carrier and formal discovery on the handset operate under different rules entirely, which is why the criminal outcome tells you very little about what a claim can prove.
• Your percentage will still be contested. Indiana Code 34-51-2 applies modified comparative fault, reducing your recovery by your share of the blame and barring it once your share reaches 51 percent. Insurers press hard to move a slice of fault onto the injured party, and phone evidence is the most effective thing there is for pushing back.
• The filing deadline. Most Indiana injury claims must be brought within two years of the crash under Indiana Code 34-11-2-4, and the evidence deadline is far shorter.

If you are not sure how these rules apply to your crash, our team will walk through it with you at no charge.

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Common Injuries in Texting-While-Driving Crashes

A driver who never looked up never braked, which means these collisions tend to happen at close to full speed.

• Traumatic brain injury from the head striking an interior surface or from rapid deceleration, sometimes with symptoms that arrive days later.
• Spinal cord injury and disc damage from the forces of an unbraked impact.
• Bone fractures of the wrist, forearm, ribs, and lower leg as the cabin deforms and occupants brace.
• Whiplash and cervical injuries from a rear-end collision at speed, which carriers routinely dismiss as minor despite months of treatment.
• Internal organ injuries and bleeding, which sometimes declare themselves only after the patient has been discharged.
• Psychological injuries, including driving anxiety, which Indiana recognizes as compensable and which claimants consistently under-report.
• Wrongful death when the crash proves fatal, which gives specific family members a claim of their own.

Documenting every injury from the first hospital visit is what holds the claim together later, so CBM coordinates with Indianapolis physicians and specialists from the beginning.

What Compensation Can You Recover After a Texting Driver Crash

What a claim is worth depends on the injuries, on how many policies can be reached, and on how far the fault percentage can be pushed toward the driver who was on the phone.

• Economic damages. Emergency treatment, surgery, imaging, rehabilitation, projected future care, prescriptions, vehicle damage, and the wages and earning capacity the injury takes from you.
• Non-economic damages. Physical pain, emotional distress, disrupted sleep, loss of the activities that defined your life before the crash, and loss of consortium for a spouse.
• Punitive damages. Available where the conduct went beyond ordinary carelessness, and a documented pattern of texting through an entire drive is the kind of record that supports the argument.
• Household and future care costs. The help a family has to hire when an injured parent cannot drive, lift, or manage a household for months.

Our team brings in treating physicians and economic experts so the demand reflects what the injury will cost across years rather than what an adjuster offers in the first month, and understanding the range of Indianapolis car accident settlements helps you judge whether an early offer is serious.

Do You Have an Indianapolis Texting-While-Driving Claim?

Katherine M. Marshall is a Partner at Christie Bell & Marshall who has tried numerous civil jury trials and was named the Indiana Trial Lawyers Association’s Max Goodwin Young Lawyer of the Year in 2019. Here is her perspective on distracted driving claims.

“The other driver is going to say they were not on their phone, and the officer usually cannot prove otherwise, because Indiana does not let police go into a phone at the roadside to check. So I stop treating it as a credibility question. I send the preservation letter to the carrier in the first week and I ask for the vehicle download at the same time, because the two records check each other. If the data shows a message at 4:52 and the crash at 4:52 with no brake application, the argument is over. What I will not do is wait for the file to develop, because the records I need are the first ones to age out.”

Do You Qualify?

These claims are usually worth pursuing when the facts include:

• Another driver rear-ended you, drifted from a lane, or entered an intersection without slowing, particularly with no evidence of braking.
• A witness saw the other driver on a phone, the driver admitted it at the scene, or a citation was issued under Indiana’s hands-free law.
• Your injuries required emergency care, surgery, or treatment that has continued beyond a few weeks.

What Cases Like Yours Have Recovered

Our team recovered $2,400,000 for a mother and her two daughters injured together, and $1,250,000 for a client injured in an Indiana car accident. You can review our case results to see the range these claims produce.

If your crash looks anything like these, call us and we will give you an honest read on where it stands.

Contact an Indianapolis Texting-While-Driving Lawyer at CBM

A texting driver’s insurer is counting on the fact that nobody can prove what the phone was doing. That is true only for as long as the records sit unrequested, and they do not sit for long.

For more than 40 years Christie Bell & Marshall has represented injured Hoosiers, and we get to work while you get to heal. You can contact CBM whenever you are ready. The consultation is free, no fee is owed unless we win, and that conversation gives you a clear picture of what comes next.

FAQs About Indianapolis Texting-While-Driving Accidents

How do you prove the other driver was texting?

Through records rather than admissions. A preservation letter followed by a subpoena to the wireless carrier produces call, text, and data activity with timestamps, and the vehicle’s event data recorder supplies the exact moment of impact along with whether the brakes were ever applied. Message activity that lines up with an unbraked collision is close to conclusive. Infotainment logs, cloud backups, corridor video, and independent witnesses corroborate it. The obstacle is timing, since the most useful carrier records are also the first to age out.

Is texting while driving illegal in Indiana?

Yes, and the prohibition is broader than texting. Indiana Code 9-21-8-59 bars holding or using a telecommunications device while operating a moving motor vehicle unless the device is used through hands-free or voice-operated technology or to call 911 about a genuine emergency. Indiana became the 22nd hands-free state when the law took effect on July 1, 2020. A violation is a Class C infraction with fines up to $500 and points against the license, and it is evidence of a breached duty in a civil claim.

What if the driver was not ticketed for using a phone?

It matters far less than people expect. Indiana limits what an officer may do at the roadside, since police may not confiscate a device to check compliance with the hands-free law or extract data from it without consent or probable cause tied to a separate crime. That means the absence of a citation usually reflects the officer’s evidentiary constraints rather than what the driver was doing. Civil discovery operates under different rules and reaches the carrier records and the handset directly.

Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?

Yes, unless your share reaches 51 percent. Indiana applies modified comparative fault under Indiana Code 34-51-2, so an award is reduced by your percentage of responsibility and eliminated once your share reaches 51 percent. At 50 percent you still collect half. Because comparative fault is the lever insurers reach for most often, the phone evidence that shifts blame toward the distracted driver is worth as much to your recovery as the medical proof.

Can the driver’s employer be liable if they were texting for work?

Frequently, yes, and it is one of the first things worth checking. Where a driver was working at the time, the employer is generally responsible for negligence within the scope of that work, which puts a commercial policy with much higher limits behind the claim. An employer can also be liable for its own conduct, through dispatch practices that expect drivers to respond to messages while moving, or through the absence of a device policy. Those internal records are obtainable in discovery and often reframe the entire case.

How long do the phone records last, and how long do I have to file?

The two timelines are very different. Wireless carriers hold detailed call and text logs on retention schedules that generally run from a few months to about a year, and the cell site and data records that show what a phone was doing at the moment of impact frequently age out sooner, so a preservation letter in the first weeks is what secures them. Vehicle downloads and camera footage run on even shorter cycles. The filing deadline is a separate and longer matter, two years from the crash for most injury claims under Indiana Code 34-11-2-4, with different timing rules where the injured person is a minor.