From 2020 to 2024, 16,481 people died in distraction-affected crashes on US roads: crashes in which police identified at least one driver as distracted. That is 8.0% of all 205,237 traffic deaths. In 2024 the figure was 3,208, 8.2% of deaths.
Most of the people who died were not the driver recorded as distracted.
| Who died | Deaths, 2020–2024 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The driver recorded as distracted | 6,617 | 40.1% |
| Passengers in that driver's vehicle | 2,383 | 14.5% |
| Drivers and passengers of other vehicles | 4,382 | 26.6% |
| Pedestrians | 2,564 | 15.6% |
| Cyclists | 409 | 2.5% |
| Other people outside a vehicle | 118 | 0.7% |
In all, 9,864 people, 59.9%, were someone other than the distracted driver. Almost one in five, 3,091, were on foot, on a bicycle or otherwise outside a motor vehicle. The remaining 8 deaths were in crashes where the only distracted driver recorded was in a vehicle that was not in the collision.
Phones
Police recorded a driver as talking on, holding or otherwise using a mobile phone in crashes that killed 2,069 people in 2020–2024, 12.6% of distraction-affected deaths. The number was 437 in 2024, 13.6% of that year's total and the highest of the five years; in the four years before it was between 397 and 423.
The pattern of who died is similar. Of those 2,069 people, 875, 42.3%, were the driver using the phone. The rest were passengers (183), people in other vehicles (641), pedestrians (293), cyclists (62) and other people outside a vehicle (15).
What police recorded
Most distraction in the data is not described in detail. Of the 15,633 drivers recorded as distracted in 2020–2024, 64.1% were recorded only as inattentive, careless or distracted, with no detail of what distracted them. The most common specific entries were:
| What the driver was distracted by | Drivers, 2020–2024 |
|---|---|
| A mobile phone | 1,914 |
| A person, object or event outside the vehicle | 1,241 |
| Other people in the vehicle | 661 |
| A device or object brought into the vehicle | 502 |
| Controls built into the vehicle | 476 |
| Eating or drinking | 203 |
| Adjusting audio or climate controls | 182 |
Police can record more than one distraction for a driver. Of the drivers recorded as using a phone, 544 entries were for talking or listening, 682 for manipulating the phone and 707 for other phone use.
Why these figures are too low
For most drivers in fatal crashes, the police record says nothing either way. Of the 289,734 drivers in fatal crashes in 2020–2024, 50.4% had no distraction status reported and a further 14.7% were reported as unknown. Only 29.6% were recorded as not distracted, and 5.4% as distracted.
Distraction is hard to establish after a crash. Unlike alcohol, there is no test for it: police depend on what drivers and witnesses say, what they can see at the scene, and sometimes on phone records, and a driver who died cannot be asked. Phone use is especially hard to confirm. A crash counted here is one where distraction was found and recorded; many others will have gone unrecorded.
Why states cannot be compared
States record distraction very differently, partly because their crash report forms differ. In 2024 the share of deaths in distraction-affected crashes ranged from 0% in the District of Columbia to 40.2% in Hawaii. The same pattern shows in the gaps: in Hawaii, 10.4% of drivers in fatal crashes had no distraction status recorded, while in North Carolina it was 98.0%, and only 1.3% of North Carolina's deaths were in distraction-affected crashes.
A state with a high count may simply record distraction more often. For that reason this page does not rank states.
Daytime more than night
Distraction-affected deaths are spread through the day more than traffic deaths overall. Where the time was known, 53.0% happened between 6am and 6pm, compared with 45.8% of all traffic deaths. The hours from noon to 6pm alone accounted for 32.1%, against 27.7% of all deaths.
| Category | Fatal crashes |
|---|---|
| 12am | 536 |
| 1am | 453 |
| 2am | 496 |
| 3am | 387 |
| 4am | 295 |
| 5am | 407 |
| 6am | 519 |
| 7am | 525 |
| 8am | 489 |
| 9am | 516 |
| 10am | 552 |
| 11am | 587 |
| 12pm | 727 |
| 1pm | 725 |
| 2pm | 780 |
| 3pm | 863 |
| 4pm | 852 |
| 5pm | 891 |
| 6pm | 890 |
| 7pm | 779 |
| 8pm | 770 |
| 9pm | 749 |
| 10pm | 696 |
| 11pm | 606 |
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Weekends matter less than for other deaths: 31.0% of distraction-affected deaths were on a Saturday or Sunday, against 33.3% of all traffic deaths.
| Category | Fatal crashes |
|---|---|
| Sun | 2,213 |
| Mon | 2,009 |
| Tue | 1,955 |
| Wed | 2,074 |
| Thu | 2,065 |
| Fri | 2,379 |
| Sat | 2,442 |
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The two charts above count fatal crashes with a distracted driver, 15,136 in 2020–2024, rather than deaths.
The longer trend
The current coding began in 2012, when 3,380 people died in distraction-affected crashes, 10.0% of all traffic deaths. The count peaked at 3,526 in 2015 and was lowest at 2,858 in 2018. It rose to 3,521 in 2021 and has fallen in each year since, to 3,208 in 2024. Because recording practice changes over time, small changes from one year to the next should be read with care.
| Category | Deaths |
|---|---|
| 2012 | 3,380 |
| 2013 | 3,169 |
| 2014 | 3,197 |
| 2015 | 3,526 |
| 2016 | 3,490 |
| 2017 | 3,242 |
| 2018 | 2,858 |
| 2019 | 3,119 |
| 2020 | 3,154 |
| 2021 | 3,521 |
| 2022 | 3,316 |
| 2023 | 3,283 |
| 2024 | 3,208 |
Comparable figures start in 2012.
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About these figures
A crash is distraction-affected if police recorded at least one driver as distracted, including drivers recorded as inattentive, careless or lost in thought, or, from 2018, a distracted driver of a vehicle that was not in the collision. This is NHTSA's definition, and the yearly totals match its published figures. It does not mean distraction caused the crash, or that the person who died was distracted. Phone-related means a driver was recorded as talking or listening on, manipulating or otherwise using a mobile phone. Drivers with distraction not reported or reported as unknown are counted as not distracted, and 1,904 vehicles with no driver present or where it was unknown whether a driver was present are left out of the driver counts. Where two drivers in the same crash were recorded as distracted, a death of either is counted as a death of the distracted driver. Figures by who died, phone use, time and day cover 2020–2024; 49 deaths with no time recorded are left out of the time shares. What counts as distraction-affected