Who Is Liable for a Missouri Car Accident Caused by a Distracted Driver?

The other driver swears they never saw you. In a distracted driving crash, that might be the most honest thing they say all day.

When a distracted driver causes a crash in Missouri, the driver who looked away is the first place liability goes, but not always the last. Phone records, the state’s hands-free law, and even the driver’s employer can change who pays and how much. Distracted driving contributed to more than 100 deaths on Missouri roads in both 2023 and 2024, according to MoDOT. Most of these crashes don’t kill anyone. They wreck your car and injure your back. The other driver’s insurance company always wants to know immediately how fast you were going.

Talk to a St. Louis car accident lawyer right after your crash. The phone records that show what really happened won’t be around forever. Here is how Missouri assigns fault after a distracted driving crash, what the hands-free law adds, how a phone gets proved, and who else might share the bill.

Fault Starts With the Driver Who Looked Away

Every Missouri driver owes everyone else on the road a duty of reasonable care. Not all drivers are always aware of that duty. Taking your eyes off the road, your hands off the wheel, or your mind off the traffic around you goes against that duty, and those are also the three types of driver distraction described by the CDC. Texting fits. So does eating a breakfast burrito or punching an address into your GPS at 45 mph.

Missouri uses pure comparative fault, which means a jury divides responsibility by percentage among everyone who contributed to the crash. If you’re found 20 percent at fault for going a few miles over the speed limit, your recovery drops by 20 percent. Fortunately, in Missouri, you can recover something even if you’re found mostly at fault, so expect the distracted driver’s insurer to look hard for any share of blame it can push onto you.

What Missouri’s Hands-Free Law Adds to Your Case

Since August 28, 2023, the Siddens Bening Hands-Free Law has barred drivers of every age from holding or supporting a phone while driving. It also bars typing or reading texts, emailing, scrolling social media, watching video, and making calls without a hands-free feature. Officers began writing tickets to noncommercial drivers on Jan. 1, 2025.

The law does leave some room. Calling in an emergency is allowed, as is using the phone while you’re lawfully stopped or parked. So is anything that runs through voice commands or a hands-free setup.

In a civil case, breaking a traffic law can amount to negligence per se, meaning the violation itself can establish carelessness. A ticket alone against the other driver won’t win your case, though. You still must tie the phone to the crash, and the crash to your injuries, and the other driver gets to offer an explanation. “I was calling 911 about a wreck up ahead” is the kind of excuse a jury might buy.

Don’t count on the crash report to do that work for you. The hands-free law limits warrants to search a driver’s phone for a violation to crashes that cause serious injury or death. So, the police report might not say anything about a phone, even when the use of one was involved.

Proving the Phone Was in Their Hand

Distracted drivers aren’t likely to confess. That means the proof has to come from somewhere else, such as:

• Cell phone records as evidence: Carrier records can show when calls were placed and when texts were sent or received. Don’t expect to read the texts themselves. Federal privacy law keeps carriers from handing over message contents in a civil case. You can, however, get the timestamps. A text sent at 4:19 p.m. says plenty when the 911 call about your accident came in at 4:20.
• Witnesses: Other drivers and passengers might have seen the driver looking down.
• Video: Traffic cameras, dash cams, doorbell cameras, and nearby businesses might have caught the crash, and that footage can get recorded over.
• Vehicle data: A car’s own electronics can show whether the driver braked before impact.
• Statements at the scene: “I was just checking my GPS” carries real weight if it’s included in the police report.

Most of this evidence has a relatively short shelf life. A lawyer can send out preservation letters and use subpoenas to lock it down before it can be recorded over or deleted.

When the Driver Isn’t the Only One Who Pays

Say the driver who hit you was working. Maybe a delivery van, maybe a sales rep running late to the next appointment, maybe a guy answering his dispatcher on the way to a job site. In Missouri, an employer answers for what an employee does on the job via a rule lawyers call vicarious liability. That matters to you because the company usually carries a much bigger insurance policy than the kid driving its van. The rule has limits, though. If the driver was just commuting to or from work, the employer is usually off the hook.

Then there’s the car’s owner. For example, if you lend your truck to a brother-in-law you know has lost his license twice, you can be held responsible for what he does with it. Missouri calls that negligent entrustment.

What if two or three defendants share the blame? Missouri draws the line at 51 percent. Any defendant found at least that much at fault can be made to pay the whole judgment, while the ones under that line pay only their own slice. The exception is the employer, who stands behind its employee’s share of fault no matter the percentage.

Everybody asks about punitive damages. Few get them. Missouri wants clear and convincing evidence that the driver meant to cause harm or showed deliberate and flagrant disregard for everyone else on the road. You can’t just write such a claim into your lawsuit. A judge has to sign off on adding it first. Scrolling Instagram at 45 mph is careless. Whether it’s flagrant is an argument for your lawyer to make.

Who Pays Depends on What You Can Prove

A distracted-driving crash takes seconds. Sorting out who’s responsible can mean digging through phone records, video, employment ties, and Missouri’s fault rules. All this usually happens while you’re still recovering and trying to keep up at work.

For more than 40 years, Casey & Devoti has represented people hurt in motor vehicle crashes in St. Louis and eastern Missouri. Our attorneys also visit area high schools to deliver End Distracted Driving presentations, so we know how these crashes happen and what it takes to prove them. If a distracted driver hurt you, reach out to our firm for a free consultation.

The other driver’s phone kept a record. Make sure someone reads it.