- A Florida driver was cited for holding a phone she lacks.
- The $116 ticket cites handheld device use while driving.
- Deputy claimed he saw the phone in her right hand.
Florida has no shortage of unusual driving laws, and some of them seem to create as much confusion as they prevent. Sometimes the debate centers on license plate frames. Other times it is about so-called ‘super speeding’. And in this story, they’re about driving and texting.
It turns out that all of these rules are ones that Florida police struggle to enforce uniformly. Occasionally, they even ticket folks for holding phones with hands that don’t even exist in the first place.
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A woman at the center of this fiasco received a ticket in Lake Worth Beach for using a handheld wireless device while driving. According to the deputy, she was holding her phone in her right hand. That’s important because there’s just one problem with that observation. She doesn’t have a right hand.
A Citation Built On A Physical Impossibility
The stop, conducted by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, resulted in a $116 citation under Florida Statute 316.305(3)(a) for “Wireless Comm. Device/Handheld While Driving – First Offense.”
In a video later posted to TikTok, the woman calmly asks the deputy to confirm what he saw. “You said you saw me holding it in my right hand, correct?” He acknowledges that’s what he said. She then lifts her arm. There’s nothing below her elbow.
“Turns out you can still get a ticket for driving with a device in your right hand, even if you don’t have a right hand,” she wrote in the caption. The clip has since racked up millions of views, though the original poster appears to have removed it.
According to CBS 12 News, the woman plans to fight the ticket in court, and the outlet uncovered another important detail. The citation only mentions holding a device, not texting on it, and that’s key.
What Florida Law Actually Requires
Florida’s distracted driving statute isn’t a blanket “phone in hand equals ticket” rule. Under current law, drivers must be manually typing or entering letters, numbers, or symbols into a wireless device for non-voice communication. In other words, an officer needs to observe more than just a device.
They need to reasonably believe the driver was actively texting, emailing, or otherwise typing. Even if this woman did have a right hand and was holding her phone, the case could easily end up dismissed. Hopefully, Florida cops will take this as just one more good reason to get more familiar with the laws they’re enforcing every day.