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Phone / distracted driving

Cell phone ticket fine

Distracted driving law is the newest body of traffic law in the country, and it is the least uniform. Two states can write what looks like the same citation for what looks like the same act and mean completely different things by it, because two independent rules are at work and neither of them is printed on the ticket.

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Select your state and violation type to see what the ticket is likely to cost over three years — the fine itself, the DMV points, and the modelled insurance impact.

Cell phone ticket fine: the short version

Estimated fine

$50 – $500

across all 51 records

DMV points

0–1 points

a typical range, not a state figure

Traffic school

Depends on your state

for this violation

Insurance model

The state tier as it stands

over three years

The first is what the state actually prohibits: holding the phone at all, or only using it to send and read messages. The second is how the prohibition can be enforced: as a reason to stop a vehicle in its own right, or only as an additional charge once a vehicle has been stopped for something else.

Those two axes produce four quite different regimes, and they explain most of what people find confusing about phone tickets — why a friend in the next state was stopped for something that is not a stoppable offence where you live, and why a hands-free state can cite a driver who was not typing anything.

Handheld bans and texting bans are not the same law

A texting ban prohibits an activity. It is written around composing, sending or reading an electronic message, which means the offence has a content element: what the driver was doing with the device matters, and a driver holding a phone for some other purpose has not necessarily broken it.

A handheld ban prohibits a posture. Holding or supporting the device while driving is the offence, and what was on the screen is beside the point. That is a far easier rule to enforce from outside a moving vehicle, which is why states have steadily moved toward it, and it is why drivers in hands-free states are sometimes cited for holding a phone they were not using.

Hands-free states generally carve out specific exceptions rather than leaving the rule to judgement: a single touch to start or end a call, use while lawfully parked, and emergency calls are the common ones. Mounting the phone rather than holding it is the behaviour the law is written to produce.

Primary and secondary enforcement

Primary enforcement means an officer may stop a vehicle for that offence alone. Secondary enforcement means the offence can only be added once the vehicle has been lawfully stopped for something else — so in a secondary state, a phone in your hand is not by itself a reason for the stop.

This is the single most common source of confusion about phone laws, and it is invisible in most published comparisons, which list only whether a state has a ban. A secondary-enforcement ban and a primary-enforcement ban are very different in practice even when the prohibited conduct is identical.

The distinction also travels badly. Enforcement is a matter for the state you are driving in, not the state that issued your licence, and a driver moving between a secondary state and a primary one experiences the same behaviour becoming stoppable at the border.

Points, escalation and young drivers

Phone violations sit at the low end of most point schedules, and a number of states assess no points at all for a first offence. That is the reason the point label on this page shows a range that starts at zero: for this violation the range is doing real work rather than reflecting uncertainty.

Escalation is where the cost is. Many states write the penalty to step up sharply on a second or third offence inside a stated period, and several states that assess no points for a first offence do assess them for a repeat. A conviction recorded now therefore has an effect on the next one that the first citation does not show.

Drivers under the state’s licensing age, and drivers holding a learner or intermediate licence, are frequently subject to a complete ban on device use — hands-free included — where the adult rule is narrower. School bus drivers and commercial drivers are commonly covered by separate and stricter rules again.

Whether it is a moving violation decides the insurance side

The fine for a first phone citation is generally modest by the standards of this site. What decides its three-year cost is whether the state records it as a moving violation, because that is what an insurer rates on.

States differ on this, and some differ within their own law: the same statute can produce a non-moving civil infraction on a first offence and a moving violation on a repeat. Where the conviction is recorded as non-moving, the insurance column on this page will overstate what it costs; where it is recorded as moving, it behaves like any other citation on the record.

Because distracted driving statutes have been amended repeatedly and recently, this is also the violation where a source from a few years ago is most likely to be wrong. The state links in the calculator result go to the state’s own current page, which is the only version that settles it.

Cell phone ticket fine in every state

All 50 states and the District of Columbia. Sort any column to see where a state sits, and read the note under the table before treating a row as a quote — the columns are not all the same kind of figure.

Alabama MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Alaska HIGH $200 – $500 $1,050 $1,550
Arizona HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
Arkansas LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
California HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
Colorado MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Connecticut HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
Delaware MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
District of Columbia HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
Florida MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Georgia MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Hawaii HIGH $200 – $500 $1,050 $1,550
Idaho LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Illinois HIGH $200 – $500 $1,050 $1,550
Indiana MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Iowa LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Kansas LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Kentucky LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Louisiana MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Maine MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Maryland MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Massachusetts HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
Michigan MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Minnesota MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Mississippi LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Missouri LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Montana LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Nebraska LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Nevada HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
New Hampshire MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
New Jersey HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
New Mexico LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
New York HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
North Carolina MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
North Dakota LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Ohio MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Oklahoma MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Oregon MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Pennsylvania MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Rhode Island HIGH $200 – $500 $1,050 $1,550
South Carolina MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
South Dakota LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650
Tennessee MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Texas MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Utah MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Vermont MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Virginia HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
Washington HIGH $200 – $500 $1,200 $1,700
West Virginia MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Wisconsin MEDIUM $100 – $300 $750 $1,050
Wyoming LOW $50 – $200 $450 $650

How to read this table

The fine column is a model. Distracted driving penalties are set by statute in some states, by local ordinance in others, and by a schedule that escalates with the number of prior offences in many — so there is no single per-state first-offence figure to quote. Our three-tier risk model grades each state high, medium or low and applies one range per tier, which is why the column takes only a few distinct values.

It prices a first offence. Where a state escalates a repeat, neither the fine column nor the point label on this page describes what a second citation inside the escalation window looks like.

The insurance column is per state, and it assumes the conviction is recorded as a moving violation. Where a state records a first phone offence as a non-moving infraction, the real insurance effect can be none at all, and the three-year total here will be too high rather than too low.

The three-year total is the higher end of the fine plus the insurance column, and nothing else — the same definition the calculator's headline uses. Every state name links through to that state's own page, where the speeding figures are broken down against the documents they came from.

Other violations

The same calculator prices every one of these, and each page covers what is specific to that violation rather than repeating this one.

Read the methodology · Guides and explainers

Phone / distracted driving

Common questions about a phone ticket.

What is the difference between a handheld ban and a texting ban?

A texting ban prohibits an activity — composing, sending or reading a message — so what the driver was doing with the device is part of the offence. A handheld ban prohibits holding or supporting the device at all, whatever is on the screen. Hands-free states generally allow a single touch to start or end a call and use while lawfully parked, and the rule is written to make mounting the phone the expected behaviour.

Can I be pulled over just for holding my phone?

It depends on whether your state enforces the ban as a primary or a secondary offence. Under primary enforcement an officer may stop a vehicle for that alone. Under secondary enforcement the offence can only be added after a stop made for a different reason. It is the same prohibited conduct either way, which is why two neighbouring states can feel so different, and most published comparisons do not record the distinction at all.

Does a cell phone ticket put points on your licence?

In some states, and often not for a first offence. Phone violations sit at the low end of most point schedules and a number of states assess none at all initially, which is why the point label on this page is a range starting at zero. Repeat offences are treated very differently: several states that assess no points for a first citation do assess them for a second inside a stated period.

Will a phone ticket raise my insurance?

Only if the state records it as a moving violation, which is what an insurer rates on. Some states record a first phone offence as a non-moving civil infraction and a repeat as a moving violation under the same statute. Where it is non-moving, the three-year total on this page will overstate the cost, because our insurance model assumes a conviction an insurer can see.

Are the rules different for younger drivers?

Usually, and they are stricter. Drivers holding a learner or intermediate licence are frequently subject to a complete ban on device use, hands-free included, in states where the adult rule only prohibits holding the phone. Commercial drivers and school bus drivers are commonly covered by separate and stricter rules again.