Leveraging Smartphones to Combat Distracted Driving

When we think about distracted driving, we automatically think of smartphones. They’re indispensable. They’re addictive. They can also be dangerous.

Crash data based on police reports indicate that around 3,350 people were killed in all distraction-related crashes and 382 died in crashes involving cell phone use in 2021. But those numbers are almost certainly underestimates, as surviving drivers often don’t admit they were looking at their phone and police can’t always tell what deceased ones were doing before they crashed.

A recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report based on a large naturalistic driving study suggests the real death toll from all types of distraction could be as much as 3 times as high, and cellphones themselves could be implicated in as many as 6 percent of all crashes.