Portland, Oregon Distracted Driving Accident Lawyer Resources

Distracted driving is now one of the most common forms of negligence I see in Portland crash cases. The driver who rear-ends you on I-405, the delivery van that drifts through a red light on Sandy Boulevard, the Uber whose driver is navigating on a phone and misses the fact that traffic has stopped. These are not freak accidents, they are the predictable result of phones and screens replacing attention to the road. Oregon has responded with one of the stricter hands-free laws in the country, and that law matters enormously in civil cases.

Under Oregon's hands-free statute, drivers are generally prohibited from holding or using a mobile electronic device while operating a vehicle, with limited exceptions. Violating that law is a traffic offense on its own, but in a civil case it is also powerful evidence of negligence. In some circumstances it can even support a claim for negligence per se. Pair that with Oregon's modified comparative fault rule (where fault percentages decide everything) and it becomes clear why cell phone records, infotainment data, and eyewitness testimony about the other driver's behavior are among the first things we subpoena in a distracted driving crash.

I am George Goldberg, founding partner of Goldberg & Loren. In more than 32 years and 20,000+ injury cases, my firm has pursued distracted driving cases involving texting, phone calls, streaming, eating, navigation, and in-vehicle screens. We know how to preserve the evidence before it disappears — cell carrier data can be overwritten, vehicle event data recorders can be cleared — and how to use it to rebut the "I just didn't see them" defense that distracted drivers fall back on. Our Portland office is at 6500 S Macadam Ave Ste 380, Portland, OR 97239.

Below you will find our resources on distracted driving and Oregon law, plus the questions we hear most often from Portland clients hit by distracted drivers. If you have been injured by a driver you believe was on a phone or otherwise distracted, call our Portland office at (971) 339-8080 or the toll-free line at 1-888-352-9243 for a free consultation.