If you've felt more distracted in recent years, you're not alone. Almost 50% of adults say their attention spans are shorter than they used to be, something that can affect almost every aspect of life, including the way we drive. In fact, according to NHTSA, nine people lose their lives every day in distracted driving incidents across the United States, and in 2022, there were 290,000 crashes involving distracted drivers.

One major source of distraction on the road is mobile phones. Glancing at your phone while driving may feel safe, but on average drivers take their eyes off the road for five seconds when sending or reading a text message. At 55 miles per hour, that amounts to driving the length of a professional football field with a blindfold on.  

The first step in reducing distracted driving is understanding when and where it occurs, and anonymized data from Samsara AI Dash Cams provides a unique view into these events. To get a fuller picture of the issue, our Data Science and Analytics team analyzed tens of millions of AI-detected distracted driving events across North America (see full methodology below). 

Read on to learn what we discovered, as well as what proactive steps organizations are taking to help eliminate distracted driving.

Arizona leads the states with the most distracted drivers.

America’s roads pass through diverse regions of all types, and some areas are more prone to distracted driving events than others. Our data shows that Arizona is the state with the highest number of distractions per 1,000 miles driven, while New Jersey, California, Nevada, Hawaii, Texas, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts round out the remaining top 10. 

On the other end of the spectrum, the states with the lowest number of distractions per 1,000 miles driven include Alaska, Idaho, Minnesota, West Virginia, Maine, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Kentucky, and Wisconsin.

Samsara's data does not indicate why some states have many more distracted driving events than others. Many factors—such as geography, traffic volume, or state driving laws—could influence distracted driving. For example, long uninterrupted roads in the Sun Belt, where Arizona is located, may increase distracted driving, while in New Jersey, dense bridge and tunnel traffic may play a role.

US 90 in Louisiana tops highways with the highest distraction rates. 

In addition to state-level data, our team also identified specific roads with high rates of distracted driving events. U.S. Highway 90 (US 90)—a major east–west U.S. highway that runs from Texas to Florida—is at the top of the list, reaching 61.9 events per 1,000 miles driven on the span of road located in Louisiana. US 422 in Pennsylvania is the next highest, with 28.8 distracted driving events per 1,000 miles, while US 24 in Indiana rounds out the top three with 26 distracted events. Interestingly, we found that drivers are more distracted on state and US highways than on interstate highways.

For distracted driving events on each of these top 10 roads, the average miles per hour that vehicles were traveling when the incidents happened were higher than posted speed limits. This suggests that driver distractions are associated with faster driving, and that going even a few miles per hour over the speed limit can worsen distracted driving.  

Drivers are most distracted at midday.

We also wanted to understand if the time of day when drivers are on the road can impact distracted driving. Our data indicates that drivers do experience higher levels of distractions in the middle of the day, with events peaking at 1:00 p.m. Drivers working overnight, on the other hand, experience far less distraction than average. In fact, drivers who are on the road in the pre-dawn hours between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. experience the least number of distractions. 

AI-based technology is helping to significantly reduce distracted driving.

Despite the prevalence of distracted driving, the good news is that it is preventable. In addition to education and regulations to promote safe driving, technology—specifically AI-based solutions—are already proving to be a useful tool to help organizations reduce distracted driving events. 

One example of this is Eurovia USA, an infrastructure construction and urban development company with a fleet of 2,000 vehicles. Eurovia USA has been able to use Samsara AI Dash Cams and In-Cab Nudges™ to detect risky behavior and coach drivers more effectively, helping to drive an 80% reduction in mobile usage events and a 76% drop in no-seatbelt usage events. 

As Ruby Dubay, the company's Vice President of Environment, Health, and Safety and HR, explained, "Before, we could only speculate that unsafe activity inside the cab caused incidents. Now, AI Dash Cams give us visibility into the cab and provide our drivers with technology to help them self-correct and prevent incidents before they happen."

Nutrien AG—the world's largest crop inputs company—is another example. Nutrien AG has used Samsara AI Dash Cams across their fleet of 15,000 vehicles to detect distracted events and prompt drivers to self-correct with in-cab alerts. 

The impact of these solutions was dramatic: In just three months, Nutrien Ag was able to reduce unsafe and distracted driving by 50%. Kyle Springs, the company’s Senior Director of Safety and Health, said, "Our previous safety coaching was manual. We didn’t have in-cab visibility into distracted driving or instantaneous correction of risky behaviors. Throughout my career in safety, there’s not likely going to be another opportunity to reduce unsafe behavior by 50%.” 

Samsara's Drowsiness Detection feature is also helping to reduce distracted driving. Drowsiness is a difficult behavior to train AI models to detect. In fact, a Samsara analysis has found that approximately 77% of drowsy driving events were detected by behaviors other than yawning alone. In contrast, Samsara Drowsiness Detection is trained on a large volume of data that considers several behaviors—including head nodding, slouching, prolonged eye closure, yawning, rubbing eyes, and others—to detect fatigue. 

For customers, the Drowsiness Detection feature can make a significant impact on distracted driving. According to the VP of Health Safety and Environment at one of the largest oilfield services companies in the U.S., "We used to have multiple drivers falling asleep at the wheel. Now, we've gone as long as 30 days without a single driver falling asleep due to these alerts."

There is a lot more work to be done to improve distracted driving on American roads. However, technology is playing a growing role in helping drivers improve their focus and drive more safely, boosting efforts to protect communities and save lives. As Eric Thiessen, Transportation Manager at Emery Sapp & Sons, states, "We have a fleet of over 300 vehicles using dual-facing AI dash cams. That's 300 more vehicles on the road with a drastically reduced chance of hitting the vehicles carrying our family members, friends, or neighbors because the driver was distracted by a mobile device."

Methodology

Data was aggregated and analyzed for thousands of Samsara customers who utilize our safety products. For this analysis, we looked at the period from July 8, 2024 to September 15, 2024. Unless otherwise indicated, data displayed are for the United States.