The NEW Georgia Law That Every Driver Needs To Know About.

Rachel was sitting at a red light on Peachtree Road when she saw it all happen in her rear view mirror. The driver behind her with a phone in his hand, eyes completely down and his head tilted in that way where you knew exactly what he was doing, scrolling on his phone not looking at the roadway. Rachel had about one second of awareness before the impact. He never braked. He hit her at about 35 miles an hour while she was at a dead stop. Two witnesses saw the driver with the phone in his hand. One even told the police officer and it made it in the police report. Well when Rachel tried to get the phone records to confirm what everyone had already seen, the insurance company told her it was not their responsibility to get that information for her and by the time her case got to the point where she could legally subpoena those records in court, too much time had passed. The window for the standard retention of those records had already passed. The data was gone. Rachel had clear evidence that the driver was on his phone and a law had been broken and she had multiple witnesses, but the technical evidence that would have locked it all in for her was gone because nobody moved quick enough to preserve it. Hi, I'm Ted Spalding, a personal injury attorney here in Atlanta. Georgia passed the hands-free law in 2018 and it changed what's possible in a Most people just don't know how to use this law to their advantage. Today I'm going to walk you through exactly what that law says, why it matters in your claim, and what you need to do to preserve the evidence before it disappears. First, what does the hands-free law actually prohibit? So Georgia law prohibits holding or supporting a wireless device with any part of your body while you're driving. You cannot hold your phone in your hand while you're driving to make a call, to scroll, or to even use the speakerphone. You cannot scroll through social media at a red light either. You cannot read or send texts. You cannot watch video. Any physical handling of the device while the vehicle is in motion or while stopped in traffic is a violation. Hands-free systems like Bluetooth, in-car connectivity, or earbuds that don't require holding the phone are generally allowed under the law. But the moment the phone is in the driver's hand, they're in violation of the hands-free law. Here's why this matters in your accident claim. When a driver violates a Georgia traffic law and that violation causes an accident, it can be used as evidence of negligence in your civil case. The legal concept is called negligence per se. What it means in practical terms is this. Instead of having to prove the driver was actually acting unreasonably in a general sense while driving, you can point to the fact that they violated this traffic law, this specific law that was designed to protect people on the roadway as the evidence of negligence. That violation shifts the burden in important ways and it can strengthen your claim significantly. And the reason for that is because, you see, a driver who's on their phone when they hit you doesn't just make a bad choice. They broke the law. That's a factually stronger position than arguing they were simply careless. So what evidence can establish that a driver was violating the hands-free law here in Georgia? Well, there's several of them. The first and most powerful evidence is the phone records themselves. See, cell phone carriers have numerous records that can show things like whether a specific number was active in sending or receiving either data, messages from another phone, or making a phone call. And it can even show the use of apps at the time of the crash. So, for example, if the crash happened at 2.47 p.m. and the phone records show an active app usage at 2.47 p.m., that's a direct line between the use of the phone in an app and the crash itself. The second type is app data directly, and that's where some apps record time-stamped information on activities. So the first one was the cell phone records might show the app usage or something else. This is specific within the app itself. It can show things beyond what the basic carrier records can show with app usage, so it can be very vital. And this sometimes can be attained through a subpoena directly to the app provider, the person who created it and monitors it, to get it if you can show relevancy and the need for it. Now, the third type is kind of more traditional, and that's witness testimony. So anyone who saw a driver holding the phone seconds before the wreck, or even better, during the actual impact, can testify to that observation. This is what Rachel had. She had two witnesses who both clearly saw the phone in the driver's hand. Well, this type of evidence is really valuable, don't get me wrong, but it's not definitive proof as the technical data that we just talked about can be. Now, your fourth type is event data recorder information, and this is sometimes called the vehicle's black box. Some modern vehicles record the driver and what they were doing with connectivity of phones and sometimes even usage of it. So you could have things like Bluetooth pairing activity, you could have the actual activity itself once it is paired, and an attorney can subpoena the car manufacturer or the insurer to get that data. And it can be very valuable in and of itself, much like the data from the phone carrier. Now, the fifth type is something that we don't get as lucky to have, but when you do, it's absolutely fantastic evidence, and that's dash cam or other video footage that shows the driver with a cell phone in their hand right at the time of the wreck. This can come from dash cam, either you have dash cam that is in your vehicle, the driver has dash cam, or traffic footage from traffic cameras, other businesses in the area, oftentimes we get it from banks, from gas stations, those sorts of things that have security cameras that just happen to be pointing out toward the roadway. Any of that kind of evidence can be fantastic to show, yes indeed, they have the phone in their hand at the time of the actual impact. Now, here's a problem, and this is critical. All this evidence is time sensitive. People must know this. Now, what do I mean by time sensitive? Well, cell phone carriers, for instance, they retain call and data records from somewhere between 18 months to seven years, depending on the carrier and the type of data, but detailed records, the kind that show moment-by-moment activity, are often retained for much shorter windows of time by these carriers, and it may require a formal legal request with justification to get access and to make sure it's preserved. Vehicle event recorder data, that can stay around a little bit longer, but you just never know. Why? Because it is overwritten by other vehicle data, which is typically another wreck or very hard breaking, and it only keeps it for a certain amount of events. So, if you don't secure it early, it could be gone by the time that you ask for it. Dash cam footage, whether from a car or you get footage from traffic or businesses in the area, security cameras, that may be overwritten in days or weeks after the wreck. So, you got to be really careful with that information. Now, this is why attorneys should and must send what's called a letter. We do it every single time within 24 hours of getting a new case. It's also sometimes called an evidence preservation demand. So, when you hire an attorney early in your case, one of the first things they do is send this out. Like I said, we do it within the first 24 hours of getting the case. It is a written notice to someone or some business that they must preserve relevant evidence, and it's got to list out the categories of evidence and telling them that they must preserve it. If they receive that notice and then destroy or fail to preserve the evidence, here's where it gets good for the plaintiff. That failure itself becomes evidence at trial. In other words, the jury can presume that that evidence would have shown something. So, if the video footage is gone, the jury's allowed to presume that, well, that footage would have shown this person on their phone. So, it becomes very valuable evidence when you can't actually get it because they destroyed it. Well, you can show that you did this spoliation of evidence letter. Courts have significant latitude to instruct juries that they can draw these negative inferences from evidence that was destroyed after a preservation letter. So, it's vital that these letters get out very, very quickly. Now, what can you do before you actually hire an attorney to try to get this information? Well, first, at the scene. It's the most important time frame. If you're feeling okay and can do it, you want to note whether you observe the other driver on their phone. So, for instance, Rachel's situation, you want to write down as soon as you can that you saw them as they were approaching on the phone. That way, you don't forget these things. Exactly what you saw, what hand it was in, those sorts of things. What was he doing? Was his mouth moving? Was he looking down? Those sorts of things. You want to take photographs of the other driver's phone if it's visible and it's safe to do so. That's very helpful as well. And then, in the days after the accident, there's some things you could do as well. You want to write a detailed account of what you observed. Include the time, the exact location, what you saw the other driver doing before impact. This kind of documentation, it can create really important evidence while your memory is fresh. Now, of course, calling an attorney as soon as possible is absolutely vital. The sooner a preservation demand can go out, the better chances you have of first that evidence actually being preserved. And then when it's not, or if it's not, that you can use that to your advantage in your case. Otherwise, you're out of luck and you have no advantage anymore. You don't want to be in that situation. Now, one thing to remember, even if you don't have phone records or technical evidence like we've talked about of phone usage, a distracted driving case is not automatically lost. Witness testimony, reconstruction analysis, physical evidence from the scene, and the absence of any braking before impact can still all build a compelling circumstantial case. It's not the best in the world, but again, it doesn't mean you're totally out of luck. But the strongest cases, remember, have the technical data. And the only way to get the technical data is to move quickly. Now, distracted driving is one of the most common causes of crashes in Georgia these days. The law gives you a tool to use if it happens to you, but the tool only works if you move quickly and you know it exists. You've got to preserve the evidence. If you're in a pedestrian that was hit by a car, or you know someone who was, the law in Georgia gives pedestrians specific rights, but these claims are fought extremely hard by insurance companies because the damages are typically very high. The next video covers what Georgia law says pedestrians are actually owed and what you need to do from the moment of impact. Watch it next.