Texting and distracted driving laws in Tennessee

Getting hit by someone who was staring at a phone is one of the most common ways people end up hurt on a Tennessee road. If that just happened to you, the details of Tennessee's distracted driving law matter, both for the ticket the other driver may face and for the injury claim you may bring.

Tennessee is a hands-free state. Since July 1, 2019, one statute, Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-199, has governed phones behind the wheel, and lawmakers tightened it again in 2024 for teenage drivers.¹ Here is what it actually says, and what it means when a distracted driver hurts you.

What Tennessee's hands-free law bans

Under § 55-8-199, a driver on any Tennessee road or highway cannot:¹

• Hold or physically support a phone or other wireless device with any part of the body.
• Write, send, or read a text-based message, including texts, emails, and instant messages.
• Reach for a device in a way that pulls you out of a properly seat-belted driving position.
• Watch a video or movie on the device.
• Record or broadcast video on the device.

This is a primary offense. A Tennessee officer can stop you and write the ticket for the phone violation by itself, with no other reason for the stop.¹ In secondary-enforcement states, an officer needs a separate violation first. Tennessee does not work that way.

You do not have to put the phone away completely, though. Calls, navigation, and voice features stay legal as long as you are not holding or manually operating the device.¹ You can talk through an earpiece, headphones, a smartwatch, or the car's built-in system, use a single touch or swipe to start or end a call, dictate a message by voice, and run GPS when the phone is mounted rather than in your hand. The statute also carves out narrow exceptions: reporting a real emergency to 911, police, fire, or an ambulance is allowed, and on-duty law enforcement, emergency responders, and certain utility workers are exempt while doing their jobs.¹

The fines, court costs, and license points

A violation is a Class C misdemeanor, but it carries no jail time. It is punished by fine only. The base fine runs up to $50, plus court costs capped at $10.¹ Two situations push it higher. The fine rises to $100 for a third or later offense, or for any violation that causes a crash. It rises to $200 when the violation happens in a work zone with Department of Transportation or construction workers present, or in a marked school zone while the warning flashers are running.¹

For a lot of drivers the fine is the smaller problem. A conviction adds points to your Tennessee driving record, and 12 or more points inside any 12-month period triggers a proposed license suspension and an administrative hearing with the Department of Safety.²

Teen drivers face a harder rule. The Eddie Conrad Act, Senate Bill 589, was signed in May 2023 and took effect January 1, 2024. It amended § 55-8-199 to charge seven points against the record of a driver under 18 caught using a phone, so a second offense can push a teen past the suspension line.³ The law is named for Eddie Conrad, a Middle Tennessee man killed in 2020 when a distracted driver rear-ended his car at a light and shoved it into oncoming traffic.³

Distracted driving by the numbers

Tennessee logs distracted-driving crashes in TITAN, the crash database run by the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, and the state records thousands of them a year.⁴⁵ That count runs low, because TITAN leaves out crashes on private property or in parking lots and any crash with under $400 in damage.⁴ The start of 2026 was already bad: six people had died in distracted-driving crashes in the first three months of the year, against eight over the same window in 2025.⁵

The national picture shows why Tennessee keeps running enforcement waves like "Operation Hands Free." NHTSA counted 3,275 people killed and an estimated 324,819 injured in distraction-affected crashes nationwide in 2023, about 8 percent of all traffic deaths that year.⁶ Cellphone use specifically was tied to 397 of those deaths.⁶ The youngest drivers are the most exposed: among drivers aged 15 to 20 involved in fatal crashes, 7 percent were distracted at the time, the highest rate of any age group.⁶

How a texting violation shapes your injury claim

If the driver who hit you was on a phone, that fact can carry real weight in a Tennessee injury case. Breaking a safety statute like § 55-8-199 is evidence of negligence, and a citation, a guilty plea, or the driver's own phone records can help put the fault on them instead of you.

Tennessee uses modified comparative fault. Under McIntyre v. Balentine, you can recover damages as long as you are less than 50 percent at fault, and your award drops by your own share of the blame.⁷ At 50 percent or more, you recover nothing. Showing that the other driver was texting is one of the cleaner ways to keep the fault where it belongs.

The deadlines here are short. Tennessee gives you one year from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit, among the tightest limits in the country.⁸ A claim for the damage to your vehicle gets longer, three years from the crash.⁹ Blow past the one-year mark on the injury claim and it is almost always gone, no matter how obvious the other driver's fault was.

Phone evidence fades fast, so timing counts. Data gets overwritten and carriers keep records for only a limited window, which is why it helps to move early, pull the police crash report, and, if the injuries are serious, talk with a lawyer before the trail cools. If you want one, start with the thatcarhitme.com legal directory. Once it is on file, you can order the official Tennessee crash report, and if the wreck cut your car's resale value, see how diminished value claims work in Tennessee.

One last point worth knowing: the other driver does not have to be convicted of the phone violation for it to matter in your civil case. Civil fault is decided separately, under a lower standard of proof than a traffic citation, so a texting driver can be held responsible for your injuries even if the ticket never sticks.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Tennessee Code Annotated § 55-8-199, prohibited uses of wireless telecommunications devices or stand-alone electronic devices. https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-55/chapter-8/part-1/section-55-8-199/

2. Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, driver point system, Rules of the Department of Safety, Chapter 1340-01-04. https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/safety/documents/1340-01-04.20140829.pdf

3. Tennessee General Assembly, Senate Bill 589 (113th General Assembly, 2023), the "Eddie Conrad Act," amending Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-8-199. https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default?BillNumber=SB0589

4. Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, "Tennessee Distracted Driver Traffic Crashes by Year & County," from the TITAN crash system. https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/safety/documents/crash_stats/Driver_Distraction.pdf

5. Tennessee Highway Safety Office, "Tennessee Highway Safety Office Launches Operation Hands-Free" (April 2026). https://www.tn.gov/safety/news/2026/4/6/tennessee-highway-safety-office-launces-operation-hands-free.html

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

7. McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d 52 (Tenn. 1992), adopting modified comparative fault. https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1992/833-s-w-2d-52-2.html

8. Tennessee Code Annotated § 28-3-104, one-year limitation for personal injury actions. https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-28/chapter-3/part-1/section-28-3-104/

9. Tennessee Code Annotated § 28-3-105, three-year limitation for injury to personal property. https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-28/chapter-3/part-1/section-28-3-105/