The Driver Who Hit You Was Probably Looking at a Phone

The rear-end with no brake marks. The drift across the center line on a dry, straight road. The left turn directly into your motorcycle. When a crash makes no sense, the explanation is usually glowing in the other driver’s cupholder — and here is the twist Nebraska drivers do not expect: the ticket for it is rare, and your case does not need the ticket.

Nebraska's Texting Law — and Its Famous Weakness

Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,179.01 prohibits using a handheld wireless device to read, manually type, or send a written communication while a vehicle is in motion, with fines running $200 for a first offense to $500 for a third. But the statute is secondary enforcement: officers may enforce it only after stopping a driver for some other violation. No trooper can pull someone over for texting alone — which is why texting citations are scarce even at crash scenes, and why waiting for the ticket to make your case is waiting for something that usually never comes.

Why the Civil Case Doesn't Need the Statute

A negligence claim asks whether the driver used reasonable care — and a driver reading a screen at 55 miles an hour fails that standard with or without a citation. The statute’s secondary-enforcement limit constrains police, not juries. In the civil case, distraction is proven like any other fact, and proving it transforms the claim: a distracted-driving crash stops being an “accident” in the jury’s mind and becomes a choice the defendant made against everyone else on the road.

How the Phone Actually Gets Proven

• Phone records, by subpoena. Carrier records timestamp calls and data sessions; matched against the crash’s established time, they put the device in use at the moment of impact. This is the workhorse, and it requires litigation tools — another reason quick settlements favor distracted defendants.
• The vehicle’s own electronics. Infotainment systems log paired-phone activity, and event data recorders show speed and braking — or the total absence of braking that is distraction’s signature.
• Witnesses and video. The driver behind who watched a head bowed at the wheel; doorbell, dashcam and business cameras along the route. Video overwrites in days — preservation letters go out immediately.
• The physical case. No skid marks, no evasive steering, full-speed impact into stopped traffic: reconstruction experts read inattention from the physics alone.
• Admissions. At the scene, drivers say true things — “I looked down for one second” — that never appear in their insurer’s later version. Write down what was said, and who heard it, the same day.

If a Distracted Driver Hit You

Treat the proof as perishable: note any scene admissions and witnesses, act fast on nearby video, and get counsel moving before the phone records question is left to goodwill. Distraction evidence also compounds the value of otherwise ordinary claims — the rear-end case the adjuster calls minor reads differently once the data shows a screen lit at impact. And Nebraska’s comparative fault rules mean the defense will hunt for your distraction too — a fact worth knowing before any recorded statement. The full framework for these claims lives on my car accident page; the consultation, as always, is free.