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In 2012, the year after the distracted driving law was implemented, collisions and injuries did actually decrease slightly: 1.9 and two per cent respectively. However, the number of traffic fatalities was up a shocking 10.2 per cent that year.

And things haven’t really improved. The year 2013 saw a 3.7 per cent in the number of crashes, including increases in both the number of deaths and injuries. It was more of the same in 2014, as we recorded a 3.1 per cent increase in the number of fatalities, a 0.5 per cent increase in the number of injuries and a 2.2 per cent in the overall number of collisions.

Perhaps the ubiquity of smartphones is to blame, and it could be argued that the distracted driving law has prevented the situation from becoming even worse than it might otherwise have been. The traffic collision statistics offer no breakdown of what percentage of crashes might be caused by distracted driving. It’s conceivably possible that we’re reducing crashes related to mobile phone use, and losing ground elsewhere.

We do know from the data that “casualty rates were highest for persons between the ages of 15 and 24” and that “male drivers between the ages of 18 and 19 had the highest involvement rate of all drivers involved in casualty collisions.”

We also know that two of the biggest factors in casualty collisions were “following too closely” and “running off the road” – both of which could be related to distracted driving.