April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month: experts say the distracted driving problem goes way beyond just handheld cell phone calls. Joel Feldman with the Casey Feldman Foundation notes that New York State already bans both hand held calls and texting while driving, but he says three quarters of all distracted driving injuries and deaths are unrelated to cell phones.
"You can’t legislate against me reaching for my GPS, me reaching into my glove compartment, me reaching around if I’ve got an infant in the back in the car seat..."
Feldman became an advocate for the issue after his daughter Casey, a 21 year old Fordham University student, was struck and killed by a distracted driver in 2009. Nationwide, he says, distracted driving is responsible for more than three thousand fatalities per year.
