Traffic deaths declined in the U.S. in 2023 by 3.6% compared with the prior year, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates released April 1. With 40,990 traffic deaths, last year was the third in a row that fatalities exceeded 40,000.
NHTSA also released new data on distracted driving and launched a campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of driving while distracted. Distraction-involved fatalities rose 8% from 2017 to 2021 but came down slightly in 2022 to 3,308 people, according to NHTSA data. An estimated 289,310 people were injured in distracted-driving accidents in 2022, the agency reported. Data for 2023 is not yet available.
But no one really knows how many deaths are due to distracted driving on U.S. roads each year. NHTSA bases its information on data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which comes from police reports, death certificates, coroner reports and a variety of state data. Reporting of distracted-affected crashes is inconsistent among states, leading to under- or over-reporting distracted driving as a factor in vehicle accidents, NHTSA says.
The agency’s own analysis estimated that 29% of traffic deaths and injuries are due to driver distraction. It estimated that in 2021 distracted drivers killed approximately 12,400 people — a number more than three times higher than officially reported.
“It’s an epidemic of distracted driving,” said Lisa-Marie Pascuccio, senior engagement manager at Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a company that provides data on vehicle and traffic behavior. “Too many people’s lives have been lost from careless use of the phone while driving.”
Pascuccio and CMT worked with the Governors Highway Safety Association on a research report, released March 28, delving into distracted driving. It calls smartphone-based distracted driving “one of the most dangerous — yet prevalent — behaviors responsible for crashes that are 100% preventable.”
Smartphone use while driving has expanded beyond phone calls to texting and other apps even as handheld mobile phone use is prohibited in 31 states and text messaging banned for all drivers in 48 states. Despite state laws that prohibit handheld phone use or texting while driving, distracted driving rose over 20% from 2020 to 2022, according to CMT.
A CMT survey of 1,600 drivers found that 19% admitted to watching YouTube while driving and an average of 20% used the camera app and WhatsApp Messenger.
The proliferation of infotainment screens in new vehicles adds another potential distraction, safety experts say. According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, in-vehicle technology “can create dangerous distractions for drivers while behind the wheel.” A study by the Transport Research Laboratory in the U.K. found that drivers took their eyes off the road for up to 20 seconds when asked to use a touchscreen interface to play a music track from Spotify. At 60 mph, a vehicle would travel about a third of a mile during that time.
It also takes time for a driver to regain full attention on the road after interacting with infotainment systems. University of Utah studies in 2015 for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that it takes up to 27 seconds after using voice commands while driving, changing music settings or sending a voice-created text message.
“We now are trying to entertain the driver rather than keep the driver’s attention on the road,” said Joel Cooper, a University of Utah research assistant professor of psychology and a co-author of the studies, in the university newsletter.
