Texting and distracted driving laws in Alaska

The driver who drifted into your lane while looking down at a phone broke a specific Alaska law, and that fact can shape your whole claim. Alaska rewrote its texting statute in 2016, so the rule on the books today is not the one many older articles describe. Nationally, distracted driving killed 3,275 people in 2023, about 8 percent of all traffic deaths.¹ In Alaska, whether that same conduct is a $500 ticket or a felony comes down to one thing: whether anyone got hurt.

What Alaska actually bans behind the wheel

The controlling statute is AS 28.35.161. It makes it illegal to read or type a text message or any other nonvoice message on a phone, computer, or similar device while you drive, and it separately bars driving with a television, video monitor, or portable computer screen running in the driver's view.² The ban reaches more than SMS. A nonvoice message includes email, social media, and app-based chat, so scrolling a feed while the car is moving falls under the same rule.

The exemptions are just as important as the ban. The statute does not touch a phone used for voice communication or to show caller identification, and it exempts navigation and GPS, displays that show vehicle information like speed, fuel level, and battery charge, and rear-view or rear-seat camera systems.² Alaska has no statewide hands-free requirement. An adult can legally hold a phone to their ear for a call. The line the state draws is reading and typing text, not holding the device.

That distinction matters after a crash. If the driver who hit you was talking on a handheld phone, they were probably within the law. If they were thumbing through a message, they weren't.

What it costs, and when it becomes a felony

Until 2016, plain texting while driving was a class A misdemeanor in Alaska. Because a misdemeanor carried the right to a jury trial, almost no one was ever convicted, and the Legislature passed Senate Bill 123 to move simple texting into traffic court where it could actually be enforced.³ Today, if the texting does not injure anyone, it is a traffic violation punished by a fine of up to $500 and no jail time.²³

The exposure changes the instant that texting hurts someone. Under AS 28.35.161, causing physical injury to another person is a class C felony, causing serious physical injury is a class B felony, and causing a death is a class A felony.² Those levels apply even to a driver with a clean record. A class C felony conviction can bring up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine, a class B felony reaches up to ten years and a $100,000 fine, and a class A felony carries up to 20 years.³⁴ Installing a screen that lets the driver watch video in a normal driving position is itself a class A misdemeanor.²

One practical point about enforcement: texting is a standalone offense, so an Alaska officer can pull a driver over and cite them for it without needing any other reason for the stop.

Anchorage draws a tighter line near schools

Alaska's largest city goes further than the state. Under Anchorage ordinance AO 2019-51(S), it is illegal to use a handheld phone at all, for a call or a text, while driving through an active school zone between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., and the fine is $500.⁵ The ordinance still lets you use a hands-free setup, make the call while stopped, or dial 911 in an emergency.⁵ The result is a split that surprises drivers: a handheld call that is legal on most Anchorage streets becomes a $500 ticket the moment you pass a posted school zone.

How the other driver's phone use shapes your claim

Alaska is a pure comparative negligence state under AS 09.17.060, which means you can recover even if you were partly to blame, with your award reduced by your own percentage of fault.⁶ Say a jury values your losses at $200,000 and finds you 10 percent responsible for a rolling stop. You still collect $180,000. A driver who was texting has a hard time shifting the blame onto you. Because AS 28.35.161 makes that texting unlawful in the first place, proving the other driver was doing it, through a citation, a witness, or phone records, pushes the fault percentage firmly in their direction.²⁶

When the conduct is bad enough, Alaska allows punitive damages on clear and convincing evidence of reckless indifference to the rights of others. Those damages are capped at the greater of three times your compensatory damages or $500,000.⁷ Your compensatory recovery has its own limits. Alaska caps noneconomic damages, the money for pain and suffering, at the greater of $400,000 or your life expectancy in years times $8,000, and that ceiling rises to $1,000,000 or life expectancy times $25,000 for severe permanent impairment or death.⁸ Economic damages such as medical bills and lost wages are not capped.⁸

Alaska handles the crash on a fault basis, so the driver who caused it, and their insurer, pay for the harm.⁹ Every Alaska policy has to carry at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per crash for bodily injury, plus $25,000 for property damage, under AS 28.22.101.¹⁰ Those minimums are thin, and a serious distracted-driving crash can blow past them. That is why underinsured motorist coverage matters. Alaska insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage when a policy is issued and at every renewal, though you can reject it in writing, so check whether you kept it.¹¹ If the texting driver totaled or devalued your car, a diminished value claim addresses the lost resale value on top of repairs, and the Alaska crash report is usually where the investigating officer's notes on distraction first show up. If the numbers get serious, talk to an Alaska injury attorney before you accept anything from an insurer.

The deadline that decides everything

None of this helps if you wait too long. Alaska gives you two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit under AS 09.10.070.¹² If the injured person was under 18 when it happened, the clock is paused until their 18th birthday, so they generally have until age 20.¹² Miss the deadline and the claim is gone, no matter how clearly the other driver was texting.

If a distracted driver hurt you in Alaska, get the police report, save any evidence that the other driver was on a phone, and get your medical treatment documented early. Those steps protect a claim more than anything you can say to the other driver's insurer.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Distracted Driving in 2023 (DOT HS 813 703), April 2025. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813703

2. Alaska Stat. 28.35.161 (Use of electronic devices while driving). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#28.35.161

3. Anchorage Daily News, Alaska lawmakers move to lower penalties for texting while driving (2016). https://www.adn.com/politics/article/alaska-lawmakers-rewrite-alcohol-texting-while-driving-laws/2016/04/18/

4. Alaska Stat. 12.55.125 (Sentences of imprisonment for felonies). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#12.55.125

5. Municipality of Anchorage, Ordinance AO 2019-51(S), As Amended (handheld devices in school zones). https://www.muni.org/Departments/Assembly/SiteAssets/Pages/default/AO%202019-051(S),%20As%20Amended%20OCR.pdf

6. Alaska Stat. 09.17.060 (Effect of contributory fault). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#09.17.060

7. Alaska Stat. 09.17.020 (Punitive damages). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#09.17.020

8. Alaska Stat. 09.17.010 (Limitation on noneconomic damages). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#09.17.010

9. Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, Mandatory Insurance. https://dmv.alaska.gov/driver-services-adjudication/mandatory-insurance/

10. Alaska Stat. 28.22.101 (General coverage requirements; policy limits). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#28.22.101

11. Alaska Stat. 21.96.020 (Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#21.96.020

12. Alaska Stat. 09.10.070 (Actions for personal injury, death, or property damage). https://www.akleg.gov/basis/statutes.asp#09.10.070