Texting and Driving in Maryland: Jake's Law, the Handheld Ban, and Your Civil Case
In 2011, five-year-old Jake Owen was riding in the back seat of his family's car, stopped in traffic in Baltimore, when a driver plowed into them without ever hitting the brakes. The driver was on his phone. Jake was killed — and under the law as it stood then, the driver faced nothing more than a small traffic fine. The outrage over that result produced one of the most significant traffic-safety laws in recent Maryland history: Jake's Law, which took effect October 1, 2014.
What Jake's Law does
Jake's Law put real teeth into Maryland's distracted-driving rules. A driver who causes a crash resulting in death or serious bodily injury while talking on a handheld phone or texting now faces up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $5,000. The law also helps investigators connect the phone to the crash: drivers involved in serious collisions can be required to provide basic information about their phones so police can determine what the driver was doing at the moment of impact.
Jake's Law sits on top of two prohibitions every Maryland driver should already know:
| Statute | What it bans | Enforcement |
|---|---|---|
| Md. Code, Transp. § 21-1124.1 | Writing, sending, or reading texts or electronic messages while operating a vehicle | Primary offense — police can stop you for this alone |
| Md. Code, Transp. § 21-1124.2 | Using a handheld phone while driving (hands-free is permitted; drivers may touch the phone only to start or end a call) | Primary offense |
| Jake's Law (2014) | Causing death or serious injury in a crash while using a handheld phone or texting | Criminal penalty: up to 1 year and $5,000 |
Why this matters in a civil injury case
We handle these cases from the civil side — getting compensation for the people distracted drivers hurt. Jake's Law and the underlying statutes matter to that work in several concrete ways.
1. A statutory violation is evidence of negligence. In Maryland, when a driver violates a statute designed to protect people like you and the violation causes your injury, the violation is evidence of negligence the jury can weigh. A driver who was texting in violation of § 21-1124.1 when he rear-ended you has handed your lawyer a powerful piece of the liability case.
2. Phone records become central evidence. Cell phone records, obtained in discovery, can establish to the minute — sometimes to the second — whether a call was connected or a message was being typed at impact. Jake's Law reflects the legislature's judgment that this evidence matters, and civil juries agree. We routinely send preservation letters early so that phone data, and increasingly vehicle "infotainment" data, is not lost.
3. It reframes the story. Defense lawyers like to describe crashes as unavoidable accidents. A criminal statute aimed at exactly this conduct lets a jury see it for what it is: a choice. A driver who picks up a phone at highway speed chooses to drive blind. At 55 miles per hour, a driver who looks at a phone for five seconds covers more than the length of a football field with no one at the wheel.
4. Distracted driving on the clock implicates the employer. Many of the worst distraction cases involve people working — delivery drivers, salespeople between appointments, employees answering a supervisor's message. When a driver on the job injures someone, Maryland law generally holds the employer responsible for its employee's negligence, and a company that pressured employees to answer calls and messages while driving may face its own accountability. The employer's insurance limits are usually far larger than an individual driver's, which can be the difference between partial and full compensation in a catastrophic case.
A warning about Maryland's harsh contributory negligence rule
One caution tempers all of this. Maryland is one of the last jurisdictions where contributory negligence applies: if the defense convinces a jury that you were even slightly at fault, you recover nothing. Expect the insurer to scrutinize your phone records too. The practical lesson for every Marylander is the same one Jake's Law teaches — put the phone away — and if you've been hit, expect the distraction question to run in both directions and prepare for it with counsel from day one.
What this means for injured people in Maryland
If you or a family member was hurt by a driver you suspect was on a phone, act quickly. Phone records and carrier data are not kept forever. Tell your lawyer about anything you noticed — the driver looking down, no brake lights, a phone visible in the car, an admission at the scene ("I only looked away for a second"). Those details tell us where to dig, and the digging is often what turns a disputed case into a compelling one.
If you or a loved one has been hurt, call Posey Lebowitz at (202) 524-0123 or send us a message for a free consultation.
Part of our DMV case law archive, compiled in 2026 to reflect the archive of some of the most important decisions in injury law.