The National Council of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) has readopted its Distracted Driving Model Act at its 2026 Summer National Meeting in Boston, keeping alive a model law that gives states a template for hands-free driving legislation.
The readoption passed through both NCOIL's Property & Casualty Insurance Committee and its Executive Committee, and was one of six model laws the organization renewed at the meeting.
Under NCOIL's bylaws, every model act comes up for reconsideration every five years, and lapses automatically if members don't act to renew it.
The Distracted Driving Model Act was first adopted in April 2021, sponsored by California Assemblyman Ken Cooley and Ohio Senator Bob Hackett, and was built around making distracted driving a primary offense, meaning police can pull a driver over for phone use alone rather than needing a separate violation to justify the stop.
NCOIL president Sen. Paul Utke of Minnesota pointed to state-level outcomes as the reason for renewing the model rather than letting it lapse.
"Distracted driving has been a big topic in states all around the country, so I encourage states that have yet to adopt this Model to take a serious look at it in an effort to have safer roads," Utke said.
Ohio, one of the earlier states to adopt a hands-free law modeled on the NCOIL framework, has seen double-digit reductions in distracted-driving crashes and overall fatalities since enactment, along with less phone use behind the wheel, according to data from the Ohio State Highway Patrol and Ohio Department of Public Safety combined with telematics data. Iowa's hands-free law showed an even sharper shift, with traffic deaths falling 27% compared with 2024 levels, reaching a century low fatality rate in 2025, alongside telematics-measured drops in on-screen tapping, handheld calling and phone-motion events while driving.
That state-level data lines up with what national research groups have found more broadly. The Governors Highway Safety Association and Cambridge Mobile Telematics have documented falling distracted driving rates in Ohio, Alabama, Michigan and Missouri after each state's hands-free law took effect, while Colorado's transportation department logged a 19% drop in inattentive-driving crashes within five months of its own law going into force.
The readoption comes as insurers continue to flag distracted driving as one of the more persistent cost pressures in auto lines generally.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions reported earlier this year that distraction-linked traffic violations are up 57% across all age groups since 2022, with the sharpest increases now showing up among older drivers rather than the younger cohorts historically associated with phone-related distraction, up 70% or more among drivers aged 36 to 45 and 73% among drivers 66 and older.
AM Best has separately identified distracted driving as one of the structural factors behind commercial auto's decade-long run of underwriting losses, alongside social inflation and rising repair costs.
NCOIL CEO Will Melofchik framed the readoption process itself as a useful check on whether a model law is actually being used.
"The Model Law readoption process is a very important part of NCOIL's work as it allows the organization to see how Models have been utilized by the states since adoption," Melofchik said. He added that the Distracted Driving Model has clearly succeeded and that he expects more states to take it up.
For auto insurers, telematics providers and brokers advising fleet and personal auto clients, the state-level data cited here adds to a growing body of evidence that primary-offense hands-free laws measurably reduce claims frequency once enforced, not just crash counts reported to police.
That distinction matters for carriers weighing how much weight to give legislative activity when setting multi-year loss projections in states considering similar bills, and for brokers fielding client questions about why rates continue climbing in states that haven't yet adopted hands-free laws even as other risk factors improve.
