Relax, and pay attention to your driving. And not your phone.

Law Enforcement’s New Challenge: Catching Distracted Drivers in the Digital Age

Introduction

Catching drunk drivers is straightforward — breath tests, field sobriety, and visible signs. Distracted drivers? Not so simple. Iowa law enforcement faces a modern challenge: proving what someone was looking at before a crash.

The Enforcement Gap

Hands-free laws are only as strong as their enforcement. Officers often can’t see what’s in a driver’s hand, and without secondary offense authority, they can’t stop vehicles based solely on suspicion.

Emerging Tools

1. **AI Traffic Cameras:** Some jurisdictions use cameras that detect phone use through windshields.
   2. **Textalyzers:** Devices that scan phones post-crash for recent activity (pending legal acceptance).
   3. **Body Cam Evidence:** Officers increasingly rely on post-stop recording to document distraction.

Policy Reform in Iowa

Neighboring states like Minnesota and Illinois have stronger primary enforcement laws. Iowa may follow suit as distracted-driving fatalities rise.

Attorney Lombardi’s Summary

I will have to do more posts on the technology of detecting cell phone use by drivers. But, for today this one will have to do. Just mentioning it should cause our readers to stop and think before picking up the cell phone while behind the wheel.