So what’s behind the increase in fatal accidents? We’ve come across a few explanations. The NHTSA attributes the overall accident increase to cheap gas and post-recession job growth, which tend to encourage more driving time. Indeed, Americans drove 3.5% more miles than they did in 2014. Yet we’ve seen fatal accidents decrease over the last few decades despite continual growth in the number of miles Americans were logging behind the wheel.

Another plausible explanation was offered recently by The New York Times. In an article published back in November, Neal Boudette cited drivers distracted by mobile phones as a leading cause of traffic fatalities. NHTSA’s data doesn’t provide an indication of whether any drivers involved in a crash were distracted. But with texts, calls, and smartphone apps now warring for a driver’s attention, distraction seems a likely culprit.

Even so, there are plenty of reasons for hope. Ongoing efforts to curtail distracted driving have provided some positive early signs. And with companies like Ford and BMW pushing to put self-driving cars into commercial use by 2021 — not to mention the strides being made by Google, Uber, Tesla, and a host of others — we could be looking at a world without human drivers in a not-too-distant future. In such a world, the concept of a “distracted driver” would become a thing of the past. For at least the next few years, however, we’ll have to combat rising fatalities on America’s roads with strategies that address the possibility of human error.