As Iowa’s new hands-free driving law goes into effect, officers prepare to educate, enforce

On Tuesday, Iowa will join 30 other states in outlawing drivers from using any phone that isn’t hands-free. The law was passed earlier this year, and will replace Iowa’s current rules about phone usage while driving, which law enforcement officers say were difficult to enforce, since only texting was banned.

“We had to really prove what a person was doing, whether it was exactly texting, or how long they were really looking at their device. There was a lot that went into that,” said Alex Dinkla, public information officer for the Iowa State Patrol. “As July 1 rolls around here, there’s no more gray area. You cannot have that phone in your hand.”

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Under the new law, the only active phone handling that is allowed while driving is a single touch, either to answer a phone call or to push a button to activate a digital assistant, like Siri.

Dinkla said the state patrol has been working with the Iowa Department of Transportation and the Governor’s Traffic Safety Bureau to prepare to educate the public about the new law as it goes into effect, using media coverage, billboards, radio ads and even educational postcards that officers can hand out during traffic stops.

Law enforcement officers will only be able to give warnings during the first six months of the law being active. Citations for phone usage will start on Jan. 1, 2026. During that six month period, officers from agencies across the state will be making an effort to stop anyone they see using their phone while driving, in order to hand out informational cards and issue warnings.

“We’re hoping that by the law being enacted in the education period, we see a decrease in distracted driving accidents. That’s our hope,” said Charlie Fields, a Cedar Rapids Police captain who oversees the department’s traffic unit. “If it saves one life, it’s worth the time.”

The number of crashes related to phone usage in vehicles has been slowly increasing in Iowa for more than 20 years. According to data from the Iowa Department of Transportation, the number of crashes increased from 518 in 2001 to 1,049 in 2023. But Dinkla said numbers are likely much higher because people don’t always report phone use before a crash if it wasn’t severe enough to cause injury or death.

“If there’s a fatal crash, then we’re able to go get a search warrant, look into that phone … and find out, was that part of the contributing circumstance or not?” Dinkla said. “We know it’s far under reported. Much of the statistics that are out there are not fully accurate, but we’ve done the best that we can with the information that is known.”

Local law enforcement also is preparing for the change by making sure officers are updated on the current criminal and traffic code. Fields said officers are used to adjusting to small changes in the code each year, and he expects this new traffic law will look similar to most other forms of traffic enforcement, now that officers can stop anyone they see using a phone.

Between Jan. 1, 2024 and June 18, 2025, the Cedar Rapids Police Department issued only 14 citations under the previous no texting while driving law. Fields said he’s not sure how much that will increase in the next few years under the new law, but he hopes that the fact a citation will now be possible will discourage people from driving distracted.

“We don’t write every violation we see. We do a lot of warnings. So, the discretion still is going to be on the officer to decide if they’re going to warn or cite after Jan. 1, 2026,” Fields said. “The nuance is going to be, what can we see and how do we explain that in court, but we did policing long before video cameras were in squad cars. We have to trust what the officer sees.”

Download: GTSB-HandsFree-Guide-2025-Final.pdf

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