Traffic Laws

Distracted Driving Laws for Teens: Penalties and the Permit Test

February 12, 2026 · Updated October 19, 20269 min readFact-checked against official state and federal sources

Reviewed by Chad HenryAfter 25 years of teaching driver education

Distracted driving killed 3,208 people in the United States in 2024, and almost every state treats a teen driver's phone more strictly than an adult's. If you hold a learner's permit or an intermediate license, the rule in most states is simple: no phone at all while driving, hands-free included, except to report an emergency. Break it and you can lose the license you just earned or have your restriction period extended. This article gives the current federal numbers, shows how ten states split the rules between adults and new drivers, lists the penalties aimed at junior drivers, and explains how the topic appears on the permit test.

The numbers, from NHTSA's latest report

NHTSA's research note Distracted Driving in 2024 (DOT HS 813 790, April 2026) is the most recent national count:

3,208 people killed and an estimated 315,167 injured in crashes involving a distracted driver in 2024.
Distraction was reported in 8% of fatal crashes, an estimated 13% of injury crashes and about 12% of all police-reported crashes.
6% of drivers aged 15 to 20 who were in fatal crashes were reported as distracted, among the highest shares of any age group.
639 pedestrians, cyclists and other non-occupants died in distraction-affected crashes.
An estimated 32,327 people were injured in crashes involving cellphone use.

The 2023 figures that many articles still quote (3,275 killed, 324,819 injured) come from the previous year's note and have now been superseded.

For teens specifically, NHTSA's Teens and Distracted Driving in 2023 note reports 241 teens aged 15 to 19 killed in distraction-affected crashes that year, and 7% of teen drivers in fatal crashes were distracted at the time.

Why the real toll is higher

Those counts come from police reports, and officers can only record distraction they can prove. NHTSA's own note points to a different method: a study using in-car cameras (naturalistic observation) estimated that distraction was involved in 29% of all crashes in 2019, with 10,546 deaths and 1.3 million injuries. That estimate comes from NHTSA's report *The Economic and Societal Impact of Motor Vehicle Crashes, 2019 (Revised)* (Blincoe et al., 2023), and NHTSA stresses it is not comparable with the police-report figures above.

Teens are a big part of the problem. The CDC reports that in 2019, 39% of U.S. high school students who drove had texted or e-mailed while driving.

What counts as a distraction

Indiana's driver manual gives the definition most permit tests use: distracted driving is any activity that takes your eyes off the road, your hands off the wheel, or your mind off driving. Those are the three types, often labelled visual, manual and cognitive. NHTSA's note adds that distraction is not just phones; it includes eating, talking to passengers and adjusting the radio or climate controls.

Texting is singled out because it does all three at once. Several state manuals, including Arkansas (p.57), Indiana (p.50), Montana (p.59) and Tennessee (p.6), print the same warning: reading or sending a text takes your eyes off the road for about 5 seconds, and at 55 mph that is the length of a football field driven blind. That line originates with NHTSA, but NHTSA's distracted-driving web page returned an access error when we tried to check it, so we cite the state manuals that reproduce it.

Phone laws: adults versus new drivers

There is no federal phone law. According to GHSA (laws reviewed June 2025), 49 states and D.C. ban texting for all drivers, 33 states and D.C. ban handheld phone use for all drivers, and 36 states and D.C. ban all cellphone use by novice drivers. The CDC counted the same 36 states and D.C. with young-driver bans as of November 2022.

The pattern in those 36 states is a two-tier rule: adults may talk hands-free, new drivers may not touch the phone. Here is how ten states write it, each from the state's official manual or code.

State	All drivers	Permit and intermediate drivers	Source
California	Hands-free only; handheld ticket $20 base fine first time, $50 after	Under 18: no phone use at all	Handbook PDF p.76-77
Texas	Handheld use banned in active school zones	Under 18: no wireless device, even hands-free, except in an emergency	Handbook PDF p.9, p.54; Transp. Code 545.425
Michigan	No holding or supporting a phone; $100 first offense, $250 after	Kelsey's Law: Level 1 and 2 drivers may use a phone only in an emergency	Manual PDF p.19, p.37-38
Ohio	No holding or typing; hands-free allowed for 18+	Under 18: no phone use, even hands-free	ORC 4511.204 and 4511.205
Illinois	Hands-free allowed only from age 19	Under 19: no phone use	Rules of the Road 2026
Minnesota	No texting, reading messages or internet use	Permit or provisional under 18: none, even hands-free, except 911	Manual PDF p.82
Oregon	18+: hands-free accessory only	Under 18: no phone or mobile device at all	Manual PDF p.88
North Carolina	Texting banned	Under 18: no cell phone; a cell-phone infraction blocks your next GDL level for six months	Handbook PDF p.14-15, p.41, p.43
Washington	No holding a phone or electronic device	Permit and intermediate: none, even hands-free, except to report an emergency	Guide PDF p.29, p.70
New Jersey	Handheld ban; first offense $200-$400	GDL drivers: no handheld or hands-free use	Manual PDF p.20, p.88

Other states we have verified follow the same split: Colorado (adults hands-free since 2025, under 18 nothing but emergency calls), Maryland, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine and Rhode Island all bar permit or under-18 drivers from any phone use. Alabama bans handheld devices for Stage II drivers. The full list, with page references, is in learner's permit rules by state.

Penalties written for junior drivers

Where an adult pays a fine, a new driver can lose the license. These are the consequences state manuals spell out:

New York: a junior driver convicted of a phone or texting offense gets a 120-day suspension.
Vermont: a junior-operator texting violation is a 30-day recall of the license, plus a fine of at least $100 and at least two points.
Maine: violating the under-18 restrictions (which include the phone ban) means a suspension and a 270-day extension of the restrictions, even past your 18th birthday.
North Carolina: you cannot move from Level One to Level Two, or Level Two to Level Three, with a cell-phone infraction in the preceding six months.
Kentucky: any violation during the intermediate phase adds at least 180 days before you can apply for a full license.
Michigan: a Kelsey's Law violation is a civil infraction with fines and/or community service.
New Jersey: any GDL restriction violation can bring a $100 fine or a suspension.
Washington: a second intermediate-license violation means a six-month suspension or until 18; a third suspends you until 18.

The lesson for a 16-year-old is that the phone rule is wired into the license timeline. One ticket can cost you half a year.

How the permit test asks about it

Distracted driving appears on every state's knowledge test, usually in one of four forms:

Definition questions. Which activities count as distractions, or which of three listed behaviours is the manual's own example. Expect the eyes-hands-mind framing.
Rule questions. Who may use a phone, and how: whether a driver under 18 may use hands-free, or whether texting is allowed at a red light. Answers come straight from the sections cited above.
Response questions. What to do when a text arrives or you need to make a call: pull over and park, not glance down at highway speed.
Fact recall. States whose manual prints the 5-second, football-field line may test that figure.

Read your own state's distracted-driving section rather than relying on a general guide. Texas, for instance, bans hands-free use for anyone under 18, while Illinois draws the line at 19 and Washington ties the ban to the permit and intermediate license rather than age. Our hardest permit test questions page collects the rule questions people miss most, and each state page (for example /texas/ or /north-carolina/) lists that state's phone rule with its handbook page.

Habits that keep you on schedule

The habits are plain, and they also protect your license timeline:

Set navigation and music before you move.
Turn on do-not-disturb or driving mode so the screen stays dark.
If something needs your hands or eyes, park first.
Keep food and drinks for after the trip during your first year.
As a passenger, speak up when a friend reaches for a phone. Teen passengers raise a teen driver's risk; a passenger who helps is the exception.

Distracted Driving Laws for Teens: Penalties and the Permit Test

The numbers, from NHTSA's latest report

Why the real toll is higher

What counts as a distraction

Phone laws: adults versus new drivers

Penalties written for junior drivers

How the permit test asks about it

Habits that keep you on schedule

Sources

Put This Into Practice

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