Springfield Distracted Driving Accident Lawyer

Someone was looking at a screen instead of the road, and now you are the one whose life stopped. We are Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers, and we represent drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and cyclists across Hampden County in distracted driving cases. We treat these clients the way we would want our own family treated, and we prepare every case for the insurer who will spend the next year suggesting your crash was somehow your fault. The consultation is free, you pay no attorney's fee unless we recover for you, and case expenses are set out in a written fee agreement before we start. You can also visit our broader Springfield car accident page.

Distracted drivers almost never admit it. Police officers responding to an ordinary injury crash rarely dig into phone activity; that investigation falls to your lawyer, in the civil case. And the proof is scattered across sources that each tell only part of the story. Getting it takes method, not magic, and it starts the week we are hired.

Here is what that actually looks like. On day one, preservation letters go to the driver, the vehicle's owner, and any employer, demanding that phones, dashcams, vehicle data, and dispatch records be preserved. Once suit is filed, subpoenas and discovery follow: carrier records that show calls, texts, and data activity around the moment of impact, and, where the facts justify it, a court-supervised forensic examination of the driver's own device, since app activity mostly lives on the phone rather than at the carrier. We are candid with clients about what each source can prove. Carrier records show that a text arrived; they do not show who was holding the phone. That is why we pair the digital records with the rest of the case: witnesses who saw a bowed head, the driver's own statements, camera footage along the route, and vehicle data showing no braking before a rear-end impact, which tells a jury where the driver's attention was not.

In 2024, crashes involving distracted drivers killed 3,208 people nationally and injured an estimated 315,000, by federal count. The real number is higher, because unlike alcohol, distraction leaves no test at the roadside. In our caseload it hides inside ordinary crash types: the Boston Road rear-ender with no skid marks, the drift out of a lane on I-91, the T-bone at a State Street signal, the pedestrian downtown that the driver never saw.

Since February 2020, Massachusetts drivers may not hold or support a phone at all. Under M.G.L. c. 90, § 13B, a driver may touch a device only for a single tap or swipe to activate hands-free mode, and may use navigation only on a properly mounted device. Reading or typing anything behind the wheel is a violation. Fines run $100 for a first offense, $250 for a second, and $500 for a third, with an insurance surcharge and a mandatory distracted driving course attached at the higher levels. Drivers under 18 may not use a device at all, even hands-free.

For your injury claim, a hands-free citation is evidence of negligence a jury may weigh, not automatic liability. We connect the violation to the crash, then prove what the crash did to you. The two together are what move insurers.

If the driver was working, their employer may be responsible for a crash caused within the scope of that work, and some cases support more: negligent supervision, or company practices that expected drivers to answer dispatch messages on the move. Rideshare and delivery crashes bring their own coverage rules. In Massachusetts, a rideshare driver carrying a passenger or en route to one is covered by $1 million in liability coverage; a driver merely logged in and waiting is covered at much lower limits. Establishing which phase the driver was in, sometimes to the minute, changes what your case is worth, and it is one of the first things we pin down.

PIP benefits pay up to $8,000 per person toward medical bills, lost wages at 75 percent, and replacement services, regardless of fault. Coordination matters: with private health insurance, PIP typically pays the first $2,000 of medical bills before your health plan takes over, but with MassHealth, Medicare, or certain self-funded employer plans, PIP generally pays first up to its full limit. We manage that sequence, and the liens that follow, so it does not come out of your recovery later.

To recover for pain and suffering, Massachusetts requires reasonable and necessary medical expenses in excess of $2,000 or a qualifying injury such as a fracture. Beyond the threshold, the claim covers treatment past and future, lost earnings and earning capacity, and pain and suffering. Massachusetts raised both its minimum bodily injury and uninsured motorist limits to $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for policies written or renewed on or after July 1, 2025, and when injuries outrun the available coverage, we look to employer policies, umbrella coverage, and your own underinsured motorist coverage. In a fatal crash, Massachusetts allows punitive damages only through the Wrongful Death Act, on proof of gross negligence or reckless conduct, and we develop those facts where a family's case supports them.

One warning we give every client: the defense will look at your phone too. Comparative negligence is Massachusetts law, and an insurer that cannot defend its driver's texting will happily argue about your speed, your lane change, or your own screen. Preserve your phone, your dashcam footage, and your vehicle, and let us handle what gets produced and how.

The records that show what that driver was doing are on retention clocks right now. Contact Jeffrey Glassman Injury Lawyers today for a free, confidential case review, and if the insurer will not pay fair value, we are fully prepared to try the case in Hampden County.

This page is attorney advertising and general information, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.