Skip to main content

Partnership to fight distracted driving

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced that the US DOT and Better Business Bureau will collaborate to educate consumers and businesses about the dangers of distracted driving. “Distracted driving has become a deadly epidemic on America’s roads,” Secretary LaHood said. “We know that educating people about the risk of distracted driving works, and we are pleased to be working with BBB to raise awareness and help businesses and consumers fight this problem.”
April 23, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
RSSUS Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced that the US DOT and Better Business Bureau will collaborate to educate consumers and businesses about the dangers of distracted driving.

“Distracted driving has become a deadly epidemic on America’s roads,” Secretary LaHood said. “We know that educating people about the risk of distracted driving works, and we are pleased to be working with BBB to raise awareness and help businesses and consumers fight this problem.”

The national website of the Better Business Bureau will feature a link to a free tool kit that provides employers with suggested distracted driving policies to help keep their employees safe. The kit, created by the USDOT and the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS), contains materials such as a sample company policy, a sample memo to employees on that policy, and a sample company press release.

In addition, Better Business Bureau’s national website will feature videos from USDOT’s “Faces of Distracted Driving” video series. The videos include heartbreaking stories from family members who have lost loved ones due to distracted driving accidents. Better Business Bureau will also provide a link to www.distraction.gov, a complete resource on everything having to do with distracted driving.

Nearly 5,500 people in the U.S. were killed and almost half a million were injured in accidents related to distracted driving in 2009. Eighteen per cent of those fatal accidents involved the use of a cell phone.

The US Department of Transportation’s campaign against distracted driving is a multi-modal effort that includes automobiles, trains, planes, and commercial vehicles.

Related Content

  • The free and open internet is dead
    June 25, 2018
    A key US vote may have changed what internet service providers are allowed to charge and how they restrict content: Joe Dysart explains why this has consequences for ITS companies. While most people were rushing around last December, grabbing last-minute gifts for the holidays, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to drive a stake into the heart of the free and open internet. In a majority vote, the agency killed ‘net neutrality’ - a policy that has prevented your regional internet service
  • Consumer telematics driving automotive electronics
    February 3, 2012
    This year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was characterised by consumer telematics solutions, writes Dave McNamara
  • Taking the long view of ITS
    March 24, 2015
    Caroline Visser believes the ITS industry must present a coherent case for consideration of the technology to become part of transport policy and planning. As ITS advisor and road finance director for the International Road Federation (IRF) in Geneva, Caroline Visser is well placed to evaluate quantifying the benefits of ITS implementation – a topic about which there is little agreement and even less consistency. She is pressing to get some consistency in the evaluation of ITS deployments through the use of
  • Multi-modal’s long road into the transportation mainstream
    June 4, 2015
    Andrew Bardin Williams looks at 20 years of multimodal transport in the Sun Belt and beyond and the key requirement for user engagement. Phoenix residents will head to the polls in August to decide whether to implement a three-tenths of a cent sales tax to fund the city’s new multimodal transportation plan. It will be the second transportation-related sales tax hike in the past 15 years yet city officials and advocates expect the resolution to easily pass—despite the strong anti-tax environment that has dom