Sometimes, yes. Cell phone records can help show that a driver was calling, texting, or using data in the seconds before a crash, and that timeline becomes powerful when it lines up with the moment of impact. What those records usually cannot do is carry the case alone. They show that a device was active, not what the person behind the wheel was doing with it, and North Dakota law treats several kinds of phone use as perfectly lawful. Our North Dakota car accident attorneys at Pringle & Herigstad, P.C. build the rest of the proof around them.
Why a Call Log Alone Does Not Prove a North Dakota Violation
North Dakota recorded 936 distracted driving-related crashes in 2024. The state traffic safety program that publishes that crash data adds that experts believe the actual number is significantly higher, because distraction is often difficult to verify at a crash scene. Proving it in a single case runs into the same problem.
The state texting ban is narrower than most drivers assume. It makes it illegal for the operator of a motor vehicle that is part of traffic to use a wireless communications device to compose, read, or send an electronic message. Traffic reaches a car in motion and a temporary stop at a signal or a sign, but not a vehicle that is lawfully parked.
The statute then carves out conduct a phone bill cannot tell apart from a violation. Entering or reading a telephone number to place or answer a call is excluded. So is using voice commands to start or take a call, and so is inputting or reading information on a navigation device. The exclusions also cover the voice and data carried by an ordinary phone call, and data the device transmits automatically without anyone touching it. They reach certain uses of multi-function devices for purposes the law does not otherwise prohibit, and any use of the device in a voice-activated or hands-free manner.
That is why a bare list of calls proves less than people expect. A two-minute call running at the moment of impact is fully consistent with a hands-free conversation, which the texting ban does not reach. A message sent four seconds before impact is stronger evidence, but even that is not automatic, because the hands-free exclusion turns on how the device was used rather than on what kind of message it carried. A message dictated by voice sits outside the ban just as a hands-free call does.
North Dakota has a second, broader offense called failure to maintain control. It does not punish distraction standing alone. It reaches a driver who was distracted while committing another offense under the motor vehicle title, or who was distracted while involved in a reportable accident that caused property damage. Distraction, for that purpose, means an activity that is not necessary to operating the vehicle and that impairs, or would reasonably be expected to impair, safe operation.
What Federal Law Lets a Carrier Release
Here is the limit that surprises most people, and that the leading articles on this subject do not mention. Federal law draws a hard line between two different things: the records about a communication, and the contents of the communication.
A provider of electronic communication service to the public may not knowingly divulge the contents of a communication in electronic storage on that service to any person or entity, except under a short and closed list of exceptions. A civil subpoena from an injured person is not on that list. The companion section that governs compelled production runs by its terms only to a governmental entity, acting through a warrant, a court order, or an administrative, grand jury, or trial subpoena. Lawful consent of the sender or a recipient is one of the exceptions, which is why message content in a civil case ordinarily comes from a phone, from a party in discovery, or from a signed authorization rather than from the carrier.
Non-content records sit on the other side of the line. The federal law that limits what a provider may disclose expressly permits a provider to release a record about a subscriber, as distinct from the contents of messages, to any person other than a governmental entity. Records of who connected to whom and when sit in that category. The statute permits that release without requiring it, so the request has to be framed correctly and sent early.
The Crash Report Is a Roadmap, Not Courtroom Proof
Some articles on this topic tell readers the police report will establish distracted driving. In North Dakota, that advice needs a correction. The Century Code states that copies of crash reports are not admissible as evidence in any action for damages arising out of a motor vehicle crash. A separate section provides that reports filed by the people involved in a crash, and the written information in them, may not be used as evidence in any trial arising out of that crash. The one exception is a certificate confirming whether a report was filed at all.
The report still matters a great deal. It identifies the investigating agency, the responding officers, the witnesses, and the vehicles, and it often captures what an officer observed about phone use at the scene. Those are the threads a lawyer pulls. What the report cannot do is walk into a courtroom and speak for itself.
Evidence That Carries a Distracted Driving Case
Phone records work best as one strand in a rope. A North Dakota distracted driving investigation usually pursues several sources at the same time:
- The driver’s phone itself, sought in discovery, which can hold message content, app activity, and screen activity that a carrier’s records do not capture
- Sworn deposition testimony from the driver, where questions about phone use are put directly and answered under oath
- Eyewitness accounts from passengers, other motorists, and people near the roadway who saw a lowered head or a lit screen
- Video from traffic cameras, business security cameras, dash cameras, and residential doorbell cameras near the scene
- Physical evidence at the scene, including an absence of skid marks or braking, which points to a driver who never saw what was coming
- Data recorded by the vehicles themselves, which in a commercial truck case can be matched against the logs and records a motor carrier is required to keep
- Accident reconstruction, in which a qualified expert works backward from the scene measurements, the physical evidence, and the vehicle data to establish speed, positioning, and the time a driver had to react
Read together, these sources answer the question a phone log leaves open. They show not merely that a device was active, but that the driver was not watching the road.
North Dakota Gives You Years to File and Months to Collect the Proof
North Dakota sets a deadline for filing suit, called the statute of limitations, and it is a long one. A catchall six-year period covers personal injury claims when no other statute sets a different deadline. When a crash kills someone, the period is shorter. The claim must be brought within two years, and those two years run from the date of death rather than from the date of the collision.
Six years sounds like plenty of time, but records often don’t last that long. Federal rules require a carrier that bills toll telephone service to keep call-billing records for 18 months, and that rule covers one category of record and sets no floor for anything else. Drivers trade in phones and erase them. A gas station camera and a doorbell camera both record on a loop, and each pass overwrites what the camera captured before. Witnesses move, change numbers, and forget the detail that mattered. The statute of limitations protects your right to file a lawsuit. The statute of limitations does not preserve evidence.
How North Dakota Divides Fault Between the Drivers
North Dakota uses modified comparative fault, a rule that assigns each person a percentage of the blame and adjusts the recovery to match. The statute bars recovery only when the injured person’s fault is, in its words, “as great as the combined fault of all other persons who contribute to the injury.” Below that threshold you still recover, and the statute then reduces the award in proportion to the percentage assigned to you.
In a two-car crash, the threshold is 50%. A jury that assigns you 49% leaves the claim intact and cuts the award by 49%. A jury that assigns you 50% ends the claim, and you recover nothing. An adjuster who argues that you were speeding, or following too closely, or looking at a phone yourself is not negotiating over value. The adjuster is working toward the one percentage that bars the claim.
Proof that the other driver was reading a message at the moment of impact reduces the percentage assigned to you, and a few points is the distance between a reduced recovery and no recovery at all.
Talk to a North Dakota Car Accident Lawyer About Phone Evidence
If you believe a distracted driver caused your crash, the proof is already degrading. We act early to send preservation demands, request records a carrier can lawfully release, and obtain message content through the routes federal law permits.
Founded in 1909, our firm has recovered hundreds of millions for injured North Dakotans. Our attorneys handle car accident and other serious injury claims across North Dakota from offices in Minot and Grand Forks. Contact us for a free consultation. We work on contingency, so you owe nothing unless we recover for you.