How many people die in US crashes involving distracted drivers, where did the old 23 times figure for texting come from, and what do state laws say now? Two federal agencies and the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) answer each part. The 23 turns out to measure something narrower than it sounds.
The 2024 answer
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that 3,208 people were killed in US motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers in 2024, and 315,167 people were injured. Those are NHTSA’s counts for crashes involving distraction of any kind, not texting alone. For all US traffic deaths, see the odds of dying in a car crash in the US.
On texting, NHTSA says:
“Texting is the most alarming distraction. Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds. At 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed.” (NHTSA)
GHSA, citing NHTSA’s report on driver electronic device use in 2024, says that at any given moment during daylight hours, more than 537,000 US drivers are visibly handling a cell phone while driving.
Where the 23 came from
Book of Odds’ 2009 page was titled “Texting Makes Driving 23 Times More Dangerous.” The figure traces to a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) study of commercial trucking, summarized in an FMCSA Tech Brief dated September 2009.
The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study combined two data sets from 2004 and 2007: 203 commercial truck drivers, 55 instrumented trucks from seven trucking fleets, and about 3 million miles of continuously recorded video and vehicle data. Analysts searched the recordings for “safety-critical events” and found 4,452 of them: 21 crashes, 197 near crashes, 3,019 crash relevant conflicts and 1,215 unintentional lane deviations. They compared what drivers were doing in those moments with randomly chosen stretches of normal driving.
Texting, listed as “text message on cell phone,” had the highest odds ratio of any task, 23.2. In the Tech Brief’s words, the odds of being involved in a safety-critical event were 23.2 times greater for drivers who texted while driving than when they were not texting.
So the 23.2 is an odds ratio for safety-critical events among commercial truck drivers in data from 2004 and 2007. It is not 23 times the crash risk for all drivers (our inference), and only 21 of the 4,452 events were crashes. The data came from trucks, not passenger cars.
Texting kept drivers’ eyes off the forward road for 4.6 seconds of a 6 second window, the longest of any task studied. Because drivers in the data texted rarely, its population attributable risk percentage, a measure that also weighs how often a task happens, was 0.7, against 7.6 for reaching for an object in the vehicle, so a big ratio can still mean a small share (our inference).
What the laws say
GHSA’s state law summary, last reviewed by state highway safety offices in June 2025:
| Law, all drivers (US, as of June 2025) | Where it applies |
|---|---|
| Ban on texting while driving | 49 states and the District of Columbia |
| Ban on handheld cell phone use | 33 states and the District of Columbia |
| Ban on all cell phone use | No state |
Washington passed the first state texting ban in 2007, according to GHSA. GHSA’s counts also cover four US territories (our arithmetic), left out of the table.
The short version
In 2024, 3,208 people were killed and 315,167 injured in US crashes involving distracted drivers, by NHTSA’s count. The old 23 figure is a 2009 FMCSA finding: among 203 commercial truck drivers, the odds of a safety-critical event were 23.2 times greater while texting.
Last checked: 2026-10-20, against NHTSA’s distracted driving page, FMCSA’s September 2009 Tech Brief and GHSA’s state law summary. This article was machine-checked against the sources above and has not been expert-reviewed. Spotted an error or a newer public figure? Please tell us on our contact page with the article link and we will review it.
Sources
- S1 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Distracted Driving Dangers and Statistics” (nhtsa.gov, risky driving section), 2024 deaths and injuries and the texting lines. https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving, accessed Oct 20, 2026.
- S2 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Tech Brief “Driver Distraction in Commercial Vehicle Operations,” September 2009, Publication No. FMCSA-RRR-09-045 (full report FMCSA-RRR-09-042), by Rebecca L. Olson, Richard J. Hanowski, Jeffrey S. Hickman and Joseph Bocanegra, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-TD2_300-PURL-gpo6489/pdf/GOVPUB-TD2_300-PURL-gpo6489.pdf, accessed Oct 20, 2026.
- S3 Governors Highway Safety Association, “Distracted Driving” state laws overview (laws last reviewed June 2025), citing NHTSA’s “Driver Electronic Device Use in 2024” for the daylight phone use figure. https://www.ghsa.org/state-laws-issues/distracted-driving, accessed Oct 20, 2026.