10/17/2026
On Thursday I was at the IIHS Vehicle Research Center in Ruckersville, VA, for the National Distracted Driving Coalition's Technology Transforming Transportation event. We watched a live crash test of a 2026 Lexus ES, walked the crash hall, and heard some of the sharpest distracted-driving data I've seen.
What stuck with me:
• A phone in the hand in the last 10 seconds before a crash means impact speeds 27–31% higher (Cambridge Mobile Telematics).
Distraction doesn't just cause more crashes. It makes them worse.
• U.S. drivers interact with their screens about 102 seconds per driving hour, the highest of any country shown.
• NTSB walked through crashes where drivers relying on partial automation hit stopped vehicles, including a fire apparatus in Culver City, CA. Technology that assists the driver doesn't replace an attentive one.
• IIHS found camera systems detect distracted drivers with accuracy close to a trained human observer, and they can work where it would be unsafe to put a person.
• South Lake Minnetonka Police showed how AI cameras on Minnesota Hwy 7 catch phone use and seat belt violations that officers on patrol rarely can.
• The Arkansas DOT shared how work zone enforcement cameras on I-57 cut phone tapping by about 10%, and statewide work zone crashes fell from 2,594 in 2021 to 815 in 2025.
The question I kept asking presenters: how do we identify responders in this data, and what can we do to keep them safer?
I wasn't the only one in the room thinking about responders. Ryan McMahon of CMT is a former EMT. Tara Casanova Powell's father was a firefighter. Both understood the question right away.
A traffic incident scene is a temporary work zone: a fire engine blocking a lane, a trooper on the shoulder, a tow operator hooking up. Today the data doesn't see it. But we now have telematics that can measure behavior by corridor, and portable cameras built for places too dangerous for an observer. Put those two together at incident scenes and we can finally measure distraction, speed, and Move Over compliance where responders actually work.
That's the gap I want to close, and I'm following up with ARDOT and others to start closing it.
Thank you to NDDC, IIHS-HLDI, NTSB, ARDOT, CMT, Tara Casanova Powell, Sgt. Adam Moore, and everyone who took my questions seriously. Let's keep talking.
