How to Stop Texting While Driving: Settings That Do the Work

The most reliable way to stop texting while driving is to make the phone stop asking. Set Driving Focus on an iPhone, or Driving mode on Android, to switch itself on when the car moves or connects over Bluetooth, turn on an automatic reply, and put the phone somewhere you cannot reach from the driver's seat. Willpower is the weakest part of the plan: the research suggests much of the texting at the wheel is habitual, starting before you have consciously decided anything.

The settings take a few minutes. What they cannot do is stop you overriding them, and few people even set them to run on their own. In a 2018 IIHS survey, only about one in five owners of a compatible iPhone had the blocking feature set to switch on by itself. Here is how to set it up so it runs without you, what the research says about each step, and what to do if you are setting rules for a teenager.

Why the reach for the phone is the dangerous part

Handling the phone is riskier than talking on it. A study of more than 3,500 drivers fitted with cameras and sensors, published in PNAS in 2016, found the odds of a crash while handling a phone were 3.6 times those of alert, attentive, sober driving. Broken down by task, dialling carried odds of 12.2 times baseline, texting 6.1, reaching for the phone 4.8, browsing 2.7 and handheld talking 2.2.

A smaller study of newly licensed teenagers, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2014, found a similar pattern. Among the novice drivers, dialling raised the risk of a crash or near-crash by an odds ratio of 8.32, reaching for a phone by 7.05 and texting by 3.87. Among experienced drivers only dialling was significant. The samples were small and the confidence intervals wide, so treat the individual numbers as rough. Both studies point the same way: the riskiest moments are the ones when your eyes and hands are on the phone.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted 3,208 people killed in crashes involving distracted drivers in 2024, with 437 deaths in crashes where at least one driver was using a phone. In Great Britain, the Department for Transport's 2025 figures record a driver, casualty or pedestrian using a mobile device as a factor in 3.2 per cent of fatal collisions.

Both of those are floors rather than totals. They come from police reports, and an IIHS study published in August 2026 matched around 17,000 crashes against phone telematics in four US states and concluded that police reports there undercount phone use before crashes by a factor of at least seven. There is no equivalent British study, so the British figure may undercount too.

Why willpower is not enough

Much texting at the wheel appears to be automatic. A 2012 study of US university students in Computers in Human Behavior found that automatic tendencies predicted both sending and reading texts while driving, even after accounting for how much people texted overall. The authors suggested targeting those automatic responses rather than relying on people's intentions. It was one sample of students, so the finding needs confirming in older drivers, but it fits what most people notice about themselves: the phone is in your hand before you decided to pick it up.

That is the case for settings over resolutions. A buzz on the seat beside you is a cue, and a habit responds to cues. Remove the cue and there is nothing to respond to. The same logic sits behind why it is so hard to stop checking your phone in the rest of your day.

Step 1: Set Driving Focus or Driving mode to switch on by itself

A setting you have to remember to turn on is one you will forget. An IIHS telephone survey of 800 drivers in 2018 found only about one in five people with a compatible iPhone had the driving blocker set to activate automatically. The full paper, published in Safety Science, puts the figure at 20.5 per cent, and found that of drivers using a different blocking app, only half turned it on at least three quarters of the time. So the first job is making it automatic.

• iPhone — Settings > Focus > Driving (if it is not listed, tap the Add button and choose Driving), then Customize Focus. Under the option to turn it on automatically, Apple's support page lists four choices: Automatically (based on detected motion), When Connected to Car Bluetooth, Activate With CarPlay, and Manually from Control Center. Pick Bluetooth or CarPlay if your car has either, since they trigger every time you get in. Detected motion also works in cars without Bluetooth, though it can switch on when you are a passenger on a bus or train.
• Pixel and stock Android — Settings > Modes > Driving. Under When to turn on automatically, tap While driving. Google notes that some of these steps only work on newer versions of Android, so menu names may differ on older phones. From the same screen you can edit the notification filters to decide what is blocked.
• Samsung — look under Settings > Modes and Routines, where a Driving mode can be set to start when the phone connects to your car's Bluetooth. Menu names vary between One UI versions, so check the wording on your own phone.

Whichever phone you have, decide what is allowed through. Calls from Favourites are a sensible exception for most people. Everything else, including messaging apps and social media, can wait until you park. If you have not already trimmed which apps can interrupt you at all, the notification detox guide does the bigger job.

Step 2: Turn on an automatic reply

Part of the pull to answer is not wanting to leave someone hanging. An auto-reply removes that. On an iPhone, go to Settings > Focus > Driving > Auto-Reply and choose who gets it: No One, Recents, Favourites or All Contacts. Apple notes that anyone who genuinely needs you can send the word "urgent" as an extra message to get through.

Recents or All Contacts is usually the right choice. A message that tells people you are driving and will reply when you arrive deals with the social pressure that sends many people back to the phone at a red light.

Android's support for auto-replies varies by manufacturer and messaging app. If your phone does not offer one in Driving mode, the next best thing is a quick message before you set off to anyone you are expecting to hear from.

Step 3: Put the phone out of reach

If you can reach it, you can override it. Every one of the settings above can be switched off in a tap or two at a junction. A phone in the glovebox, a bag on the back seat or the boot cannot.

No trial has tested the glovebox specifically. The case rests on the habit research: if the cue and the reach are both gone, the automatic response has nothing to start from. The UK motoring group the AA has campaigned on exactly this, and it costs nothing to try.

If you use the phone for navigation, a fixed mount is the obvious compromise. Set the route before you move, and leave it alone until you stop.

Step 4: Measure your phone use behind the wheel

Feedback changed behaviour in the largest trial on this, and a phone mount on its own did not. A randomised trial of 1,653 drivers using an insurer's tracking app, published in PNAS in 2024, gave one group nothing but education about the risks and another group a free phone mount. The mount group did not use their phones in their hand significantly less than the education-only group, and neither did a third group that also made a written commitment and received habit tips.

What worked was feedback. Drivers who got weekly goals, points and a leaderboard comparing them to similar drivers cut handheld phone use by 20.5 per cent relative to control. Adding small cash prizes raised that to 27.6 per cent. The effects held for 25 to 65 days after the programme ended. At the start, drivers averaged about six and a half minutes of handheld use per hour of driving.

You probably cannot run a leaderboard for yourself, but you can borrow the measurement:

1. Check whether your insurer has a telematics app. Some usage-based insurance apps, like the one in the trial, score phone handling per trip. If yours does, look at that score every week.
2. If not, keep a log for two weeks. After each drive, note whether you touched the phone and why: a message, navigation, music. The reasons tell you which setting to fix.
3. Change a setting after the first week, then compare the second week with the first. A number you see every week is harder to ignore than a good intention, which is the same principle behind tracking your screen time for a baseline week.

Why hands-free is not the same as safe

Voice control solves the hands problem but not the attention problem. A 2015 AAA Foundation study by researchers at the University of Utah found mental distraction could persist for as long as 27 seconds after drivers used voice commands to dial, change music or send a text. Even with the least distracting systems, drivers stayed impaired for more than 15 seconds. Those were 2015 systems and today's assistants may well be less demanding, but the underlying point stands: composing a message takes your mind off the road even if your hands stay on the wheel.

The law has a similar blind spot. An IIHS study of Arizona's no-holding law, published in October 2025, found drivers were 21 per cent less likely to make handheld calls by 2024 and spent 26 per cent less time on them. Typing and scrolling did not fall significantly in roadside observations, and the telematics data showed a slight increase. In Arizona, at least, the ban cut handheld calls and left typing and scrolling untouched.

So dictating texts is better than typing them, but neither is the goal. The settings above stop the conversation starting in the first place.

What the law says

In Great Britain, GOV.UK states that you can get six penalty points and a £200 fine for holding and using a phone, sat nav or any device that can send and receive data while driving. If you passed your test in the last two years, you lose your licence. The rule applies while you are stopped at traffic lights or queuing in traffic. Since a change in the law on 25 March 2022, the rule covers virtually any handheld use, not only calls and texts. If the case goes to court, you can be fined up to £1,000 and banned from driving. Northern Ireland sets its own rules, so check nidirect, the Northern Ireland government site, if you drive there.

You can use a handheld phone if you are safely parked, or to call 999 or 112 in an emergency when it is unsafe or impractical to stop. Hands-free use is legal as long as you do not hold the device at any time, but the same page warns that police can stop and prosecute you if they think you are distracted and not in control.

In the US the rules are set by each state. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, 49 states and Washington DC ban texting for all drivers, and 33 states and DC ban handheld use altogether. Check your own state's law, since the details and penalties differ.

If you are setting rules for a teenager

Texting at the wheel among teenagers has not fallen. The CDC's 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey found nearly half, 46 per cent, of US high-school students who had driven in the past 30 days had texted or emailed while driving. The CDC describes that as no change since 2015, when the figure was 41 per cent. Rural students were more likely to than urban ones, at 55 per cent against 42.

Three things worth doing, the first two backed by research:

1. Model it yourself. A 2014 study of 403 teenagers in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that teenagers who saw their parents as distracted drivers were more likely to drive distracted themselves.
2. Set the blocking up together, and expect workarounds. In a 2015 trial of blocking software for teen drivers, both blocking groups made significantly fewer calls and texts per mile than the control group. Some teenagers also looked for ways round the software or used another teen's phone. No trial has compared agreed rules with covert ones, but a rule they agreed to gives them less reason to hunt for a workaround.
3. Write it down. A car rule belongs in the same agreement as the rest of their phone rules. The family phone agreement guide covers what to include, and the printable agreement has a driving line ready to use.

When to look for more help

For most people, an automatic Driving Focus, an auto-reply and a phone out of reach are enough. If you find you cannot get through a short drive without reaching for the phone even with all three in place, that pattern is worth taking seriously in its own right. Talk to your GP, particularly if the urge to check is part of wider anxiety or low mood, or if it shows up in other places where it is putting you or other people at risk.

If you have already had a near miss or a crash involving your phone, the settings are the minimum. Consider whether a driver-improvement course or a conversation with your insurer about telematics feedback would help, and for anything wider than driving, start with the evidence-ranked guide to using your phone less.