Distracted Driving: What Constitutes Criminal Negligence?

This past September, a 24-year-old Newport man was driving on Route 4, when his vehicle fatally struck an SUV driven by a young pregnant woman. 

The sadness over the loss of life was followed by outrage, as many Rhode Islanders disagreed with the prosecution deciding to not charge the driver criminally.  The driver stated to police that he had momentarily taken his eyes off the road to look for his wallet which had fallen off the dashboard.  In the end, prosecutors did not feel that the driver’s actions had risen to the level of criminal negligence.  As a result, the driver plead guilty to civil charges of failure to maintain control and failure to drive at the right speed.

 The next logical question is…what would constitute criminal negligence in a distracted driving case? 

A recent New Hampshire case may help shed some light on the issue.  Like Rhode Island, in New Hampshire it is illegal to text while driving but legal to talk on the phone.  However, in a recent case, talking on a cell phone was found to have distracted a driver enough to sustain a charge of negligent homicide resulting from a car crash.

In the case, the driver struck and killed a pedestrian who had nearly finished crossing the street at a cross walk.  Facts of the case, such as the speed of the vehicle and the crash happening at dusk, seemed to suggest that the driver may not have been criminally negligent.   Of crucial importance however was the driver’s admission of receiving and placing cell phone calls during her trip.

Although the driver claimed to not have been on the phone at the time of the crash, accident reconstruction showed that the driver had approximately 13.5 seconds to see the pedestrian and that her view would have been unobstructed.  This was far longer than the estimated 1.5 seconds it would take a reasonable driver to react after a momentary distraction such a sneeze or changing a radio station. 

Further, prosecutors were able to introduce the driver’s phone records into evidence, which showed that she in fact been on the phone at the time of the collision.

The court found the driver guilty of negligent homicide.  The court reasoned that although talking on her cell phone while driving was not itself criminal, her behavior was nevertheless a gross deviation from the conduct that a reasonable person would have observed under those circumstances.

It is difficult to fully reconcile these and other cases into any sort of bright line rule, as all the facts of each case must be taken into account when deciding whether a person’s conduct rises to a criminal level.  Nevertheless, it is certainly worth understanding that even “legal” behavior may result in criminal charges and loss of life. 

Contact: AThayer@srt-law.com

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