Distracted Driving May Be More Common Than We Think
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
We know using a phone behind the wheel can be dangerous, but what has been harder to measure is how often it happens in the moments before a crash. New research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests the answer may be far more often than police reports indicate.
IIHS researchers compared police crash reports with anonymized cellphone data from nearly 17,000 crashes. Phone activity was detected within 30 seconds before 7% of single-vehicle crashes and 8% of two-vehicle crashes, while police reports for those same crashes recorded cellphone use in fewer than 1% of cases. Based on that comparison, IIHS concluded that cellphone use before crashes may be undercounted in police reports by a factor of at least seven.
Why phone use can be hard to spot after a crash
After a crash, an officer can document skid marks, vehicle damage, weather conditions and the position of the vehicles. Determining what a driver may have been doing on a phone seconds earlier is much more difficult, especially if no one saw it happen and the driver does not volunteer that information.
Today’s phone use is also much less obvious than it once was. A driver may be checking directions, changing music, tapping an app, reading a notification, scrolling through social media or interacting with something on the screen that would be almost impossible for a witness in another vehicle to identify. In a separate IIHS survey, nearly one in four drivers acknowledged watching a video on their phone while driving at least once during the previous 30 days, illustrating how varied distracted behavior can be.
Why can't police just check the phone?
It may seem like the obvious solution: If investigators suspect a driver was using a phone before a crash, why not simply check the device? In most cases, however, it is not that straightforward.
A smartphone contains a tremendous amount of private information, including messages, photos, email, location history and app activity. Police generally cannot simply open and search a phone after an ordinary crash. Accessing the device’s digital contents typically requires the driver’s consent, a search warrant or another legally recognized basis.
In a serious crash investigation, particularly one involving a fatality or suspected criminal behavior, investigators may seek a warrant for the phone or pursue other electronic records. Depending on the circumstances, information may also be available through cellular providers, apps, vehicle systems or other telematics sources. But that level of investigation does not occur after every traffic crash, which helps explain why cellphone use may be overlooked in routine crash reports.
That is part of what makes the IIHS study so useful. Researchers were not relying on drivers to admit they had been using their phones or on officers to identify evidence after the fact. Instead, they were able to compare police reports with anonymized telematics data from drivers who had voluntarily enrolled in safe-driving programs, providing a much clearer view of phone activity in the moments before impact.
A few seconds can make a surprisingly big difference
One of the simplest statistics in the research may also be one of the most important: Looking away from the road for just two seconds can double the risk of a crash or near-crash. That may not sound like much time, but at highway speeds, a vehicle can cover a significant distance before the driver’s attention returns to the road.
NHTSA estimates that reading or sending a text typically takes a driver’s eyes off the road for about five seconds. At 55 mph, that is roughly the length of a football field traveled without continuously watching the roadway ahead.
The new IIHS research also suggests that more subtle phone interactions may be especially easy to miss in traditional crash reporting. Among more than 15,000 two-vehicle crashes studied, telematics detected drivers manipulating their phones 590 times during the 30 seconds before impact. Police reports recorded just 17 such instances.
Virginia isn't immune
Distracted driving is also a significant issue in Virginia. In 2024, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles recorded 90 deaths and 11,256 injuries in distracted-driving crashes across the state.
“Eyes not on road” was the most commonly recorded category of distraction, while cellphone use and texting ranked second. Virginia law prohibits drivers from holding a cellphone or other wireless communication device while operating a moving vehicle, except in limited circumstances, but enforcement still depends on what officers can observe or later establish.
That raises an important question: If phone use is difficult to identify after a crash, are the distracted-driving numbers we see every year telling us the whole story? The new research suggests they may not be.
Even when another driver is clearly responsible for a crash, there can be another complication: that driver may not carry enough insurance to cover the damage or injuries they cause. Learn more about uninsured and underinsured drivers in Virginia.
What the study doesn't tell us
The study does not prove that every crash involving recent phone activity was caused by distracted driving. Researchers could determine that a phone was being used shortly before a crash, but they could not determine whether the phone caused the collision or whether the person using it was at fault.
An unlocked screen, for example, could have been displaying navigation without requiring the driver to touch the phone or even look at it at that exact moment. That distinction matters because the value of the study is not in assigning blame to individual crashes, but in showing that cellphone use around the time of crashes appears to be substantially more common than traditional reporting has captured.
Make the phone less tempting before you drive
Technology may be helping researchers understand the problem more clearly, but it can also help drivers reduce the temptation to reach for a phone. Setting a destination, choosing music or a podcast and enabling a driving or Do Not Disturb mode before pulling away can eliminate many of the small decisions that otherwise happen on the road.
If something requires more than a quick voice command, the safest option is still to wait until the vehicle is parked. The larger lesson from the research is simple: even brief distractions can matter, and the phone activity we know about may represent only part of what is actually happening before crashes.
The road can change a lot in two seconds. Your phone can wait.
For families with a new driver, setting expectations around phone use before the keys are handed over can be especially important. Read more about helping teen drivers stay safe behind the wheel.
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