Texting While Driving Car Crash Lawyer in Missouri and Illinois

As texting and social media use have become central to daily life, distracted driving crashes have risen sharply across Missouri and Illinois. When a driver takes their eyes off the road to read or send a text, their reaction time slows dramatically and they lose awareness of everything around them — traffic lights, stop signs, pedestrians, and other vehicles. The resulting crashes frequently cause catastrophic injuries that require months or years of recovery and permanently alter the victim’s quality of life.

If you or a loved one suffered injuries in a crash caused by a texting driver in Missouri or Illinois, you have the right to pursue full compensation from the at-fault driver. Contact Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers for a free case review and let us build the strongest possible claim on your behalf.

The Prevalence of Texting While Driving in Missouri and Illinois

Distracted driving is not limited to teenagers. Research consistently shows that adults, including parents, engage in texting while driving at alarming rates. According to a U.S. News and World Report study, two-thirds of parents admitted reading text messages while driving and approximately half admitted composing texts while behind the wheel. The more distracted driving behaviors a person exhibits, the higher their likelihood of causing a serious crash.

Whether a driver is texting, reading emails, scrolling social media, or using GPS on a handheld device, the danger is the same. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, texting drivers take their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds. At 55 miles per hour, that is the equivalent of driving the length of a football field completely blind.

Texting and Driving Laws in Missouri

Missouri enacted the Siddens Bening Hands Free law in August 2023, prohibiting all drivers from holding or using a phone while driving. Under this law, all Missouri drivers are prohibited from holding the phone in their hand while driving, sending or reading text messages, recording or sending video, participating in video calls, and watching media on any personal device.

Prior to this law, Missouri only restricted drivers under 21 from texting while driving. Even before the 2023 law, texting while driving constituted negligence under Missouri civil law. Any driver whose phone use caused a crash could be held fully liable for the injuries they caused regardless of whether they faced criminal charges.

Texting and Driving Laws in Illinois

Illinois has a strict hands-free law prohibiting all drivers from using any handheld device while driving. This includes texting, emailing, browsing social media, and video calls. Drivers must use hands-free technology if they need to communicate while driving. Violations carry fines, license points, and in serious cases, criminal charges. In a civil personal injury claim, a violation of Illinois’s hands-free law is strong evidence of negligence that Mutrux Firm uses to strengthen your case.

Why Is Texting While Driving So Dangerous?

Texting while driving creates three simultaneous types of distraction that make it uniquely dangerous compared to other forms of distracted driving.

Manual distraction occurs when a driver removes one or both hands from the steering wheel to hold and operate a phone. Visual distraction occurs when a driver’s eyes leave the road to look at the screen. Cognitive distraction occurs when a driver’s mental focus shifts from driving to reading or composing a message.

All three types of distraction happening at once at highway speeds creates a crash risk that is significantly higher than any single distraction alone. Across the United States, 424,000 people are injured every year in distracted driving crashes and distracted driving caused over 3,000 fatalities in a recent year.

Negligence and Texting While Driving Crashes

Negligence is the legal foundation of most motor vehicle crash claims. To establish negligence in a texting while driving case, Mutrux Firm must prove the driver owed you a duty of care, they breached that duty by using their phone while driving, that breach directly caused your crash, and you suffered documented damages as a result.

Both Missouri and Illinois law recognize texting while driving as a breach of the duty of care owed to other road users. Evidence that a driver was using their phone at the time of the crash significantly strengthens your civil claim regardless of whether they were criminally charged or convicted.

How Mutrux Firm Proves a Driver Was Texting at the Time of the Crash?

Proving phone use at the time of a crash requires acting quickly before evidence disappears. Mutrux Firm uses the following evidence to establish distracted driving negligence on your behalf:

Phone records subpoenaed from the carrier showing call, text, and data activity at the time of impact, dashcam and traffic camera footage showing the driver looking down at a device, witness statements from other drivers and bystanders who observed the phone use, accident reconstruction analysis establishing the driver’s failure to brake or react before impact, and the driver’s own social media activity timestamped to the time of the crash.

How Mutrux Firm Helps Texting While Driving Crash Victims in Missouri and Illinois?

When you trust Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers with your texting while driving crash case, we handle every step of the process. We gather and preserve all available evidence before it disappears, take depositions from the at-fault driver and witnesses, negotiate aggressively with the insurance company, prove liability using phone records and accident reconstruction, calculate your full damages including future medical costs and lost earning capacity, and take your case to trial if the insurer refuses to offer fair compensation.

Through a personal injury claim, you may recover lost wages and loss of earning capacity, medical bills and rehabilitation costs, pain and suffering, property damage, and in cases involving especially reckless conduct, punitive damages. Missouri gives you five years to file a texting while driving crash lawsuit. Illinois gives you two years. Do not wait. Contact Mutrux Firm Injury Lawyers as soon as possible to protect your rights.

No fees unless we win. Call (888) 550-4026 for a free case review today.