According to the Virginia Highway Safety Office, in Virginia nearly 30,000 crashes per year are attributed to distracted driving, In 2013 Virginia responded to this carnage by beefing up its laws governing the use of electronic communications devices (such as cell phones) while driving. The heaviest penalties, however, are reserved for drivers who cause accidents due to distracted driving.
Distracted Driving Limitations in Virginia
Texting and driving is banned for most drivers in Virginia, with the following exceptions:
- Emergencies
- When stopped in traffic or on the shoulder of the road
- On-duty emergency vehicle drivers, such as ambulance drivers, may text in the line of duty
There is no general prohibition against talking on a cell phone while driving, except that drivers under 18 may not do so (and may not even use hands-free models). Drivers over 18 using hands-free models cannot use earphones in both ears.
A citation for distracted driving will cost you $125 for a first offense and $250 for a second offense.
If you are Involved in an Accident Caused by Distracted Driving in Virginia
When someone causes a traffic accident, Virginia applies the common law doctrine of “negligence per se.” This means that if you violate a safety statute by, say, texting and driving, and thereby cause an accident, a court will rule you automatically negligent in a personal injury lawsuit – the matter will not even be submitted to the jury to decide whether or not your texting and driving was careless enough to classify you as “negligent.”
If you are sued and the court rules that you were negligent per se, however, all is not lost. You can still avoid paying damages by proving that the accident was partly the other party’s fault. Any small amount of negligence will be enough to win – if you were 99 percent at fault and the other party was 1 percent at fault, for example, you will still be excused from paying any damages at all, due to Virginia’s draconian “pure contributory negligence” rule.
Pure contributory negligence is a double-edged sword, however. If you are injured in an accident in which you were texting and driving and you sue the other driver, the other driver’s lawyer will seize upon your misbehavior to attempt to completely exonerate his client no matter how serious his fault was.
Employers need to be particularly careful – if your employee causes an accident while on duty, you could be held jointly liable for damages even if you were not at all at fault.
Possible Criminal Penalties
Paying damages can be troublesome and even financially devastating. If your actions under the circumstances are characterized as “criminal negligence”, however, you could end up in prison. In fact, Virginia has enacted a statute under which a texting driver causes death while driving on a revoked or suspended license can be charged with a felony. There are many other possible circumstances under which your behavior could be classified as criminal (taking your eyes off the road for 30 seconds to read a text message might be enough, for example). The dividing line between civil penalties (money damages) and criminal penalties (prison) is fuzzy in Virginia.
– Updated through September 1, 2016