In an article by Daniel Vock, senior reporter for Route Fifty, American drivers have been more distracted by their phones in the last few years, and that appears to have contributed to a recent surge in traffic deaths. Route Fifty is a news publication owned by GovExec, the market-leading information platform that catalyzes the government mission, empowering the full government ecosystem to achieve its missions.

An analysis by Cambridge Mobile Telematics, a company that analyzes driver behavior based on data from mobile phones and other internet-enabled devices, concluded that U.S. drivers were 23% more distracted last year than in 2020.

“By almost every metric CMT measures, distracted driving is more present than ever on U.S. roadways,” the company’s analysts wrote.

Drivers interacted with their phones on nearly 58% of trips in 2022, up from 54% in 2020, an 8% rise. Thirty-four percent of phone motion distraction happens above 50 mph, the highest rate in three years. The data on distracted driving comes as traffic safety advocates and regulators are scrambling for ways to reduce the number of people who die in or around automobiles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released estimates last week that road fatalities remain far higher than before the start of the pandemic.

NHTSA estimates that 42,795 people died in traffic crashes in 2022. That preliminary number is far higher than the 2019 estimates of 36,355 people who died from vehicles.

“We continue to face a national crisis of traffic deaths on our roadways, and everyone has a role to play in reversing the rise that we experienced in recent years,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. In the meantime, safety advocates have looked to other sources of data, like Cambridge’s, to understand why road deaths are so much higher now than before the pandemic.

In the first year of the COVID-19 outbreak, many people stayed off the roads. Some police departments scaled back enforcement in the wake of mass protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. With less traffic and fewer police to slow them down, many drivers who did go out traveled faster and behaved more recklessly. But even after traffic returned and police stepped up enforcement, the number of road deaths remained stubbornly high.

“Distracted driving, particularly smartphone screen interaction and phone handling, has long been known to increase cognitive load, impairing drivers’ ability to focus on the road. The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that sending or receiving a text message takes a driver’s eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, equivalent to traveling the length of a football field at 55 mph blindfolded,” the Cambridge analysts wrote.

But the company said states that passed hands-free laws, including New York, saw significant decreases in distracted driving within a few months. Handheld use dropped on average by 16% shortly after new laws took effect in eight states, but it gradually rose to 13% after three months. By the end of 2022, phone use in the eight states was 3% higher than it was before the laws took effect. We must do better.