The Ohio State Highway Patrol says distracted driving is a big problem and to prove it, the agency is tracking those cases on a new public dashboard.
It’s not just people using cell phones who are distracted. The Patrol’s Lt. Craig Cvetin says they’ve documented accidents involving people tuning out while adjusting their radio or dealing with kids in the back seat. He says the number of incidents continue to climb.
“From 2016 to 2020, there were 195 fatal crashes that resulted in 212 deaths in Ohio alone that were related to distracted driving," Cvetin says.
And he says that number is low because officers often don’t know what people were doing before the crash happened.
The new distracted driving dashboard can be viewed at DistractedDrivingDashboard.ohio.gov
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