“No one should ever get hurt or lose their life because of a text or a phone call,” said Lorraine Martin, NSC CEO. “By keeping our eyes on the road and our hands on the wheel, we all have the power and responsibility to make our roads safe for everyone. The National Safety Council calls on every driver to travel distraction free – doing so will save lives.”

“Distractions come in many forms – phones, infotainment systems, passenger interactions. Whether visual, manual or cognitive, all distractions can cause inattentional blindness – the failure to notice a visible hazard because attention is focused elsewhere,” according to the National Safety Council. NSC research shows that even hands-free technology is not distraction-free.

Safety experts think that actual Distracted Driving Deaths could be higher because no standardized method exists to reliably capture distraction as a contributing factor in crashes.