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Long-awaited reforms for Florida’s assignment of benefits (AOB) crisis that the insurance industry and consumer advocates say has led to less coverage and higher rates for Florida property owners will officially become law July 1.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 7065 on Thursday, marking the end to a seven-year battle by the industry and reform advocates seeking a solution to escalating abuse of the policyholder benefit.

“I thank the Florida Legislature for passing meaningful AOB reform, which has become a racket in recent years,” DeSantis said in a statement. “This legislation will protect Florida consumers from predatory insurance practices.”

DeSantis previously indicated he would sign the bill after it was passed by lawmakers in April, saying “the exponential growth in AOB abuse has contributed to mounting insurance costs for Floridians for far too long.”

“By signing House Bill 7065, we will better protect consumers from those who would take advantage of them by abusing the Assignment of Benefits process,” Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier said in a statement after DeSantis signed the bill.

The bill’s provisions:

• Define “assignment agreement” and establishing requirements for the execution, validity, and effect of such an agreement
• Prohibit certain fees and altering policy provisions related to managed repairs in an assignment agreement
• Transfer certain pre-lawsuit duties under the insurance contract to the assignee and shifting the burden to the assignee to prove that any failure to carry out such duties has not limited the insurer’s ability to perform under the contract
• Require each insurer to report specified data on claims paid in the prior year under assignment agreements by Jan. 30, 2022, and each year thereafter
• Allow an insurer to make available a policy prohibiting assignment, in whole or in part, under certain conditions
• Revise the state’s one-way attorney fee statute to incorporate an attorney fee structure in determining the fee amount awarded in suits by an assignee against an insurer
• Require service providers to give an insurer and the consumer prior written notice of at least 10 business days before filing suit on a claim.

The bill also requires savings be passed along to Florida consumers who are covered by Citizens Property Insurance Corp., which has borne the brunt of AOB abuse.

In South Florida in particular, AOB lawsuits have exploded over the last 10 years and Citizens has filed for rate increases to offset litigation costs. It proposed rate increases for 97 percent of its homeowners policyholders for 2019.

Written into the bill is a stipulation stating Citizens “may not implement rate changes in 2019 for DP-3 and HO-3 policies unless the rate filing reflects projected rate savings from this act.”

Citizens said in a statement after the passage of the bill that its actuaries estimated reforms would reduce the statewide average rate need from 25.2% to 10.1% for homeowners policyholders. In South Florida, the average rate need would drop from 30.4% to 12.8%.

Citizens spokesperson Michael Peltier told Insurance Journal in April that the insurer is planning to refile its rate request in the coming months. It plans to release further details at a later date and will work with the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) on timing.

Barry Gilway, president, CEO and executive director of Citizens praised the signing of the bill on Thursday.

“This new law represents a major step forward in our efforts to stem rising premiums caused by unnecessary litigation and assignment of benefits abuse. It is going to make a difference,” he said in a statement.

Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis said Florida consumers are the biggest winners with the soon-to-be law’s protections.

“This year, we advocated for Florida homeowners and passed reforms to help stop rampant lawsuit abuse across the state. My fraud detectives, as well as sheriffs, state attorneys and other law enforcement leaders have joined our efforts to create a Fraud Free Florida, and this new law furthers this mission,” Patronis said.

Other industry groups also praised the passage of the bill.

“We are grateful that AOB reform is now officially here for homeowners, so fewer Floridians can be taken advantage of during their times of need,” said Michael Carlson, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of Florida (PIFF).

On Friday, the governor also signed House Bill 337, which contains language providing that the attorney’s fee provisions of HB 7065 takes effect once the bill has been signed by the governor and becomes law. Lawmakers added the effective date for the attorney fee provision to HB 337, which was already the works, in response to claims by law firms profiting off of AOB agreements that they would rush to file cases and continue AOB abuse before the law takes effect on July 1.

Lead Florida AOB attorney Harvey Cohen posted a video within days after the reforms were passed urging vendors to submit their AOB agreements for litigation as soon as possible. The video was circulated by the Florida Consumer Protection Coalition in a news release titled “Shameless.”

“The law takes effect July 1, so you need to have your documents sent to us right away. Make sure we get all of these cases filed well before July 1,” Cohen said. “You can imagine, at the end of June there is going to be a mad rush to get everything filed.”

Fred E. Karlinsky, co-chair of law firm Greenberg Traurig’s Insurance Regulatory and Transactions Practice Group in Florida, said adding the effective date to HB 337 was a wise move by lawmakers.

“This predatory practice has cost the citizens of the state of Florida tens of millions of dollars and the legislature and governor clearly wanted to put an immediate end to it,” he said.

As many as 8 hurricanes may form in the Atlantic in 2019, a “near normal” season following two years of storms that have left a trail of death and destruction in the Caribbean and U.S. coast.

Nine to 15 named storms are forecast during the six-month season that starts June 1, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been largely correct with its predictions in recent years. Of those, 4 to 8 will become hurricanes and 2 to 4 will be major systems with winds of 111 miles (179 kilometers) per hour or more.

“It only takes one landfalling hurricane to create great destruction to a community, we need to prepare now,” said Daniel Kaniewski, a deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The hurricane season will be closely watched because of its potential to take a heavy human toll as well as rattle oil and gas markets across the globe. Over the past two years, storms including Michael, Irma and Harvey led to scores of deaths and over $250 billion in damages. They have also sent U.S. gasoline prices surging, shifted global crude and fuel flows, disrupted production in the energy-rich Gulf Coast and threatened crops.

This year is the fifth time in a row that a system has spun up in the Atlantic before the official June 1 start to the season, with Subtropical Storm Andrea forming earlier this week. A system gets a name when it reaches tropical storm strength with winds of 39 mph.

Still, a lingering El Nino weather phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific could help keep overall storm numbers lower by creating wind shear across the Atlantic that rips budding systems apart, said Neil Jacobs, acting NOAA administrator. In April, Colorado State University predicted 13 storms could be named in the Atlantic this year.

Energy markets will focus on the potential impact in the Gulf Coast, which accounts for 45% of U.S. refining capacity and 51% of gas processing. About 5% of the nation’s natural gas and 17% of crude comes out of the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Energy Information Administration.

There are also more than 6.6 million homes with an estimated reconstruction cost of $1.5 trillion along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, according to the Insurance Information Institute in New York. Florida is the world’s second-largest producer of orange juice.

In 2018, storms Michael and Florence struck the U.S. South, causing widespread damage that’s still lingering as residents struggle to rebuild. Florence ripped into North Carolina in September, bringing record storm surge and rain that flooded homes and businesses before causing additional destruction across South Carolina. It’s blamed for 52 deaths, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The following month, Hurricane Michael leveled homes in Florida’s panhandle when it came ashore near Mexico Beach. The storm killed at least 16 and caused $25 billion in damage, the National Hurricane Center said. It was the third most intense storm in terms of central pressure and brought the fourth strongest winds of any to hit the contiguous U.S. on record.

Both storm names have been retired from official lists.

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After seven years of failed attempts, Florida legislators have passed property insurance reform to address the abuse of a policyholder benefit known as assignment of benefits (AOB).

The insurance industry and consumers advocates say the abuse has caused higher insurance premiums in the state and made insurance harder to obtain.

By a vote of 25-14 by the Florida Senate on Wednesday passed a measure (SB 122) that addresses the abuse of post-loss AOBs for residential or commercial property insurance claims and limits one-way attorney’s fees related to AOB agreements. The bill was a committee substitute for House Bill 7065, which passed the House on April 11.

The bill’s provisions:

• Define “assignment agreement” and establishing requirements for the execution, validity, and effect of such an agreement
• Prohibit certain fees and altering policy provisions related to managed repairs in an assignment agreement
• Transfer certain pre-lawsuit duties under the insurance contract to the assignee and shifting the burden to the assignee to prove that any failure to carry out such duties has not limited the insurer’s ability to perform under the contract
• Require each insurer to report specified data on claims paid in the prior year under assignment agreements by January 30, 2022, and each year thereafter
• Allow an insurer to make available a policy prohibiting assignment, in whole or in part, under certain conditions
• Revise the state’s one-way attorney fee statute to incorporate an attorney fee structure in determining the fee amount awarded in suits by an assignee against an insurer
• Require service providers to give an insurer and the consumer prior written notice of at least 10 business days before filing suit on a claim.

The Senate bill was sponsored by Senator Doug Broxson, chair of the Insurance & Banking Subcommittee.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill, which would then become law on July 1, 2019.

Advocates of reform praised the passage of the bill, saying it was long overdue and will bring much needed relief to Florida homeowners.

Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier issued the following statement to Insurance Journal following the passage of the AOB reform,

“OIR’s main focus is to work towards decreasing insurance costs for consumers living in Florida, while balancing the solvency needs of companies operating in Florida. The passage of HB 7065 is a significant step towards stemming the insurance product affordability and availability crisis that has grown from years of compounding AOB abuse.”

President of the Florida Association of Insurance Agents (FAIA) Jeff Grady said the passage of AOB reform is also a big win for insurance agents.

“This a long awaited day for Florida consumers and the industry as a whole. Agents have been impacted by AOB fraud resulting in poor loss ratios and cancellations of company appointments,” Grady said. “We are grateful for the leadership within both the legislature and the Florida cabinet to finally enact AOB reform and eliminate this fraud from our insurance marketplace.”

A restoration contracting company owner was arrested this month in Florida for allegedly stealing more than $40,000 from consumers who assigned their insurance benefits to him through assignment of benefits (AOB) contracts, according to a statement from Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis.

Wyatt Green, owner of Storm Restoration Specialists LLC, and his staff are accused of forging customer signatures on construction documents and insurance claim payment checks that required signatures from both the homeowner and mortgage lender. An AOB gives a third-party authority to file a claim, make repair decisions and collect insurance payments without the homeowners’ involvement.

Detectives from the Florida Department of Financial Services discovered that Green was hired by four homeowners to perform contracting work. Green’s office would directly receive insurance checks that required three signatures—one from the homeowner, one from the mortgage lender, and one from Storm Restoration Specialists LLC. Allegedly, Green directed his staff to forge homeowners’ signatures on the checks as well as added the mortgage lenders’ endorsement before depositing the checks into his bank account.

The investigations revealed that Green and his employees purchased 58 false bank endorsement stamps from a online manufacturer to aid in this scam.

Employees of Green also admitted to forging customer signatures on construction documents required by counties and municipalities. In some cases, construction work was never completed, and in others the work never even began.

Green was booked into the Duval County Jail on April 12, on charges of organized scheme to defraud, grand theft and forgery. If convicted, Green faces up to 35 years in prison.

“This case is another example of a bad contractor scamming Floridians and pocketing the money without actually making repairs. AOBs were once used to protect Floridians but recently, assigning your benefits over to a contractor has become an abusive practice,” Patronis said. “When they hire a company, consumers should have peace of mind that work is being completed and not have to worry about being left high and dry by a contractor. My detectives work hard every day to find these criminals and stop them from preying on homeowners.”

Self-driving vehicles could be operated in Florida without a human backup under a bill approved by a House committee last week, which could pave the way for companies like Uber and Lyft to deploy fleets of driverless vehicles.

Republican sponsor Rep. Jason Fischer said he wants Florida to be ahead of other states in allowing the vehicles on state highways as the technology continues to develop. His bill updates a current law allowing self-driving vehicles if there’s a person in the car as a backup. The House State Affairs Committee approved the bill on a 20-1 vote and it’s now ready for a vote by the full House.

“Florida is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leaders in self-driving vehicle public policy, and in order to maintain this position and encourage companies to test and deploy here in our state, we must address our existing laws governing motor vehicle operation that did not contemplate a driverless future when they were written,” Fischer said.

In the same meeting, the committee advanced a separate bill outlawing texting and other distractions while driving. Fischer’s bill states that if there is a person behind the wheel of self-driving car, he or she could or watch television or text if the automated driving system is engaged.

Self-driving cars have come under more scrutiny after a vehicle Uber was testing fatally struck a pedestrian in Arizona last year. But Fischer, who is an electrical engineer, said he wouldn’t be sponsoring the bill if he didn’t think the cars were safe. He said 94% of fatal motor vehicle accidents in 2017 were caused by human error.

“These vehicles are designed in a way to operate much more intelligently and maybe even more rationally than a human driver would,” Fischer said.

Democratic Rep. Wengay Newton said there have always been safety concerns as transportation technology advances.

“We used to have horses and buggies and when you went to tie the horse up to try to make sure you could get to market, sometimes the horse would kick you in the head, but we moved through that,” Newton said. “Do we go back to horses and buggies so everybody is safe and get kicked in the head, or do we embrace the technology and move forward?”

A companion Senate bill was unanimously approved in its first committee and had two more stops before reaching the full chamber as of last week.

Nearly eight in 10 consumers talk on the phone while driving and more than 30 percent admit to having been in a near-miss crash because they were distracted.

Also, although distracted driving poses potential liability risks for companies, many expect employees to remain connected and do little to discourage such behaviors behind the wheel

Travelers Companies announced these and other results of its 2019 Travelers Risk Index, which surveyed more than 2,000 consumers and executives about distracted driving and the reasons behind it.

The Travelers Risk Index identified common distractions when behind the wheel, including:

• Typing a text or email (44 percent).
• Using social media (23 percent).
• Recording videos or taking photos (22 percent).
• Shopping online (15 percent).

“It’s startling to see that drivers continue to engage in potentially life-threatening habits,” said Chris Hayes, second vice president of Transportation, Risk Control at Travelers. “Whether driving for work or on personal time, many drivers overlook risks that make our roads more dangerous for all of us.”

Some drivers say it would be difficult to stop such behaviors. Thirteen percent of respondents say they would find it very difficult to stop reading texts or emails while driving, and 11 percent say it would be difficult to stop typing texts or emails while driving. In addition, five percent of respondents say they would find it very difficult to stop shopping online while driving.

Nineteen percent say they would still drive distracted even if it was against the law.

(Recent research out of the School of Public Health at Texas A&M University and published in the American Journal of Public Health — Texting-While-Driving Bans and Motor Vehicle Crash–Related Emergency Department Visits in 16 US States: 2007–2014— suggests that laws against texting may make a difference. The study found that crash-related emergency room visits fell four percent on average from 2007 to 2014 in states that prohibit texting while driving. Crash-related injuries dropped eight percent in states that placed primary bans on texting while driving, the study found.)

Although many smartphones have settings to help drivers stay focused, most drivers do not use these features. Consistent with last year’s index from the insurer, only 12 percent of consumers set their phones to Do Not Disturb while driving. In fact, of those respondents who do not activate the Do Not Disturb feature, 41 percent actively choose not to turn it on, while others simply forget to turn it on or find it inconvenient to do so (35 percent), according to the survey.

Workplace Accountability

The 2019 index also suggests that many workplaces do not consider the full consequences of distracted driving. According to the National Safety Council, the average economic cost of a crash is more than $1 million per death and more than $78,000 per nonfatal disabling injury. However, 12 percent of executives surveyed do not worry about the liability associated with a crash caused by a distracted employee, and most (74 percent) do not consider distracted driving to be of great concern.

The connected culture and mounting workplace expectations may be contributing to distracted driving. While most businesses report being at least somewhat concerned about employees’ use of mobile devices on the road, an overwhelming majority (87 percent) of executives expect workers to be sometimes or frequently reachable outside of the office. Employees feel this pressure, as 20 percent of respondents who admit to replying to work-related messages while driving say they do so because they worry about upsetting their boss. Further, nearly half of those same respondents say they always need to be available or do not want to miss a work-related emergency. Lastly, 17 percent say drive time is when they get a lot of work done.

“The pressure to always be online and connected can be deadly,” added Hayes. “Even though distraction-related crashes occur frequently, some companies continue to expect constant connectivity without considering what’s at stake.”

According to Travelers, three out of four workplaces have implemented distracted driving policies. However, just 18 percent of businesses advise employees to set their phones to Do Not Disturb before driving, and only 40 percent report knowing of an employee who was disciplined for not complying with company policy.

Passive Passengers

According to the survey, having conversations about driving behavior can make a difference. Sixteen percent of consumers say they rarely or never speak up while in a car with a distracted driver, yet more than half (54 percent) say they would likely cease distracted driving behaviors if they were asked to do so.

Some conversations about distracted driving are already happening: Two-thirds of parents have spoken to their children about distracted driving, and the same amount of companies say they have an employee education program about the dangers of distracted driving and how to avoid it.

About the Travelers survey: Hart Research conducted a national online survey of 1,000 consumers, ages 18 to 69, in March 2019. Separately, Hart surveyed 1,050 executives from businesses of all sizes. Both surveys were commissioned by Travelers.

Flood insurance premiums could rise and property values fall in the most deluge-prone areas under a plan the Trump administration intends to roll out in coming weeks to change the way risk is calculated under the National Flood Insurance Program.

Instead of simply focusing on whether a home is inside or outside of the 100-year flood plain, the Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to use private-sector data to calculate the real flood threat for each home and set costs based on that data, according to people familiar with the effort and a briefing document obtained by Bloomberg.

Samantha Medlock, North America head of capital, science and policy at insurance broker Willis Towers Watson Plc, said the change “could be the first major advancement to improve understanding of flood risk since the creation of the NFIP itself.”

The change could also hurt communities with the greatest flood risk. The new policy “is certainly an issue of concern and one we are actively tracking and engaged on,” Liz Thompson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Home Builders, said in an email.

The overwhelming majority of American households with flood coverage receive their policies through the National Flood Insurance Program, which covered about 5 million policyholders in 2017. Despite the growing risk of flooding due to climate change, the number of policies under the program has fallen about 10 percent from its peak in 2009.

Flood insurance will get fresh attention this week from Congress. On Wednesday, the House Committee on Financial Services is set to hold a hearing on reauthorizing the NFIP.

Lawmakers have struggled to reform the program. In 2012, Congress passed changes that would impose premiums that reflected the full risk for homes, only to back down two years later in the face of intense public opposition.

FEMA, asked to comment on its plans, offered a statement by David Maurstad, deputy associate administrator for insurance and mitigation, who said the new system “will help customers better understand their flood risk and provide them with more accurate rates based on their unique risk.”

The initiative, which FEMA calls Risk Rating 2.0, comes as climate change places growing pressure on the publicly subsidized flood insurance program. Claims often outpace premiums, saddling the program with a debt that topped $30 billion in 2017. The models that determine those rates ignore certain kinds of flooding, such as intense rainfall. And many Americans at risk of flooding nonetheless don’t buy insurance.

Transparent Costs

The new system is designed to address some of those problems. The agency plans to pair its existing mapping data with “commercial catastrophe models,” as well as the “geographic and structural characteristics” of the home, according to a briefing document presented by FEMA to private flood insurance representatives in October and obtained by Bloomberg.

The goal, according to that document, is more transparent and understandable costs, which will in turn spur more people to get flood protection.

“Policies that are easier to sell and buy = more insurance coverage,” the document says.

The document offers the example of two homes in a 100-year flood plain. The first home, at the edge of that zone, faces low risk of flooding from inland flooding or storm surge; the second faces higher risk from both. Under the current system, each home pays the same premium; with the changes, the first home’s premiums would fall by 57 percent, while premiums for the second home would more than double.

Customer Risk

The same document, dated Oct. 17 2018, said that FEMA would first introduce the new risk rating system for states along the Gulf Coast and Southern Atlantic, from Texas to North Carolina. New rates would begin to take effect in 2020.

A FEMA spokeswoman said parts of the document were no longer accurate, but declined to say which ones.

“Our new system will determine a customer’s flood risk by incorporating multiple, logical rating variables –- like different types of flood, the distance a building is from the coast or another water source, or the cost to rebuild a home,” Maurstad said.

The agency said it didn’t yet know what the effect of the new system would be on premiums. But rates are likely to go up in neighborhoods with the greatest exposure to flood risks, which could hurt property values in those areas, according to Michael Berman, a former chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association who worked on housing issues for the Obama administration and has been briefed on the plan.

Important Initiative

Still, Berman said the initiative was an important one. “Anything that they can do to improve people’s understanding of flood risk compared to binary 100-year flood plain is good for consumers and good for investors in the long run, even if it raises premiums,” he said.

Increasing the cost of flood insurance tends to depress home values for two reasons, according to Asaf Bernstein, an economist at the University of Colorado at Boulder whose research includes asset pricing and household finance. Not only do higher premiums raise the cost of owning a home; they also act as a warning to potential buyers about the likelihood that a house will flood.

R. J. Lehmann, director of insurance policy at the R Street Institute, which advocates for market-based solutions to climate change, said that even if FEMA’s new approach caused home values to fall in some areas, the shift was necessary.

Updated Look

“Adapting to climate change is never going to be a cost-free exercise,” Lehmann said in a phone interview. “We absolutely need a more granular and more updated look at what flood risk is.”

A spokesman for the National Association of Realtors, Wesley Shaw, declined to comment on what the change could mean for homes values in areas with the greatest flood risk.

“We need to wait and see what FEMA comes out with before we can evaluate the market impact,” Shaw said by email. “We welcome FEMA’s efforts to modernize and improve the fairness of its ratings methods.”

FEMA said the way the law is written on flood insurance gives it the authority to change the way it sets rates without action from Congress. The agency said it hadn’t yet decided when the new rates would take effect, and how quickly.

“We will take an agile approach to share information transparently about the release of this new system with all stakeholders,” Maurstad said.

Florida Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jimmy Patronis has announced a new initiative aimed at reducing fraud in the state.

According to a statement from the Florida Department of Financial Services, the “Fraud Free Florida” initiative will work to better coordinate collective investigative efforts to protect Florida’s large population, especially seniors, from “scam artists.”

“Florida currently ranks first in fraud and second in identity theft nationwide. In 2017, identity theft cost Americans nearly $905 million,” Patronis said. “This is unacceptable, and we must use innovative ways to stay two steps ahead of criminals who want to take your identity, steal money from families who need it, and prey on vulnerable Floridians.”

Fraud Free Florida will bring together statewide law enforcement officials, local state attorneys, private sector stakeholders, and members of CFO Patronis’ fraud investigative teams. The goal will be to help Florida stay ahead of new scams and take on fraud already taking place in the state including: fraud at unscrupulous opioid treatment centers, public assistance fraud, identity theft, and cybersecurity issues.

Patronis noted fraud is especially rampant after every hurricane, when “millions of dollars are stolen as crooks prey on Florida families in their time of need to make a quick buck.”

Fraud Free Florida is part of DFS’ Division of Investigative and Forensic Services (DIFS), which includes the Disaster Fraud Action Strike Team (DFAST) aimed at curbing hurricane-related insurance fraud, as well as the Division of Public Assistance Fraud. DIFS is a statewide law enforcement agency dedicated to rooting out fraud and investigating financial crimes. DFS said Fraud Free Florida will help agencies better collaborate on fraud cases and identify needed law changes.

“I look forward to creating a lasting impact as we go after these criminals and expose scam artists who aim to cheat the system and target hardworking Floridians,” Patronis said.

People can learn more and report fraud and scams at FraudFreeFlorida.com.

Manipulating a cellphone was a contributing factor in more than 800 crash deaths on U.S. roads during 2017 amid a marked increase in the percentage of drivers observed interacting with cellphones, new research by the insurance institute for highway safety (IIHS) indicates. The estimated number of deaths, however, still represents a fraction of the overall crash death toll.

Virginia drivers observed in a 2018 IIHS roadside survey were 57 percent more likely to be manipulating a cellphone than drivers in a 2014 survey. The percentage of drivers observed manipulating a phone rose from 2.3 percent in 2014 to 3.4 percent in 2018.

At the same time, drivers were less likely to be seen simply holding a cellphone or talking on a hand-held phone than in the prior survey. The finding is consistent with research indicating that drivers are talking on hand-held phones less and fiddling with them more often than in recent years.

In 2018, 3.7 percent of drivers in Northern Virginia were observed talking on a hand-held cellphone, compared with 4.1 percent of drivers in 2014, while 2.8 percent of drivers in 2018 were seen holding a cellphone, compared with 4.9 percent in the prior survey.

The problem of distracted driving, especially cellphone use, continues to raise concerns. A 2018 national survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that 64 percent of respondents consider distracted driving a much bigger problem today than it was three years ago.

Estimating Crash Risk

About 37,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2017, the most recent year of data available. Assuming the prevalence of phone manipulation nationwide rose as it did in Northern Virginia to 3.4 percent, and assuming, based on the latest research, that fatal crash risk is 66 percent higher when manipulating a phone, then more than 800 of the estimated crash deaths in 2017 could be attributed to phone manipulation.

This estimate is based on work by IIHS and other researchers describing how the estimated risk and prevalence of phone use can be combined to estimate the number of crash deaths that could be attributed to phone use in a given year (see Status Report special issue: phoning while driving, Feb. 27, 2010). The 66 percent increase in fatal crash risk associated with manipulating a cellphone relative to driving when other secondary behaviors were present is a finding of a 2018 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

“The latest data suggest that drivers are using their phones in riskier ways,” says David Kidd, who co-authored the study and is a senior research scientist with HLDI. “The observed shift in phone use is concerning because studies consistently link manipulating a cellphone while driving to increased crash risk.”

Cellphone use affects how drivers scan and process information from the roadway. Drivers generally take their eyes off the road to dial, send texts and browse the web on a hand-held phone — all activities that fall under the rubric of manipulating the phone. Drivers engaged in cellphone conversations tend to concentrate their gaze toward the center of the roadway, but their attention still may be diverted from driving and make it difficult for them to process what they are looking at.

Tracking Trends in Distraction

Procedures for the 2018 update followed those used in 2014 (see “Distracting behaviors are common at red lights, less so at roundabouts,” March 31, 2015). IIHS stationed observers at 12 locations across four Northern Virginia communities, on straight stretches of roads, at signalized intersections and at roundabouts in March 2018. Observers noted nearly 12,000 drivers in the 2018 survey and more than 14,000 drivers in 2014 during the morning, afternoon or early evening on weekdays. Researchers noted if drivers were engaging in one or more of 12 visible secondary behaviors while moving or stopped at red lights.

About 23 percent of drivers were engaged in one or more distracting activities:

• Talking on hand-held cellphone
• Manipulating hand-held cellphone (excludes looking at phone in mount)
• Simply holding hand-held cellphone (i.e. not obviously manipulating or talking)
• Wearing Bluetooth earpiece or headset with mic
• Wearing headphones or ear buds
• Manipulating in-vehicle system (touching radio, climate control, touchscreen display or other controls; excludes operating stalks or buttons on steering wheel)
• Manipulating or holding mobile electronic device other than cellphone
• Talking or singing
• Eating or drinking
• Smoking
• Grooming
• Other (reaching for object, reading print material, adjusting sun visor, putting on glasses, holding another object)

“When people talk about distracted driving, most often cellphones are the focus, but drivers are distracted by other secondary behaviors more often than cellphones,” Kidd points out. “Things as simple as drinking coffee or talking to your kids can take your attention away from the road.”

About 14 percent of drivers were engaged in nonphone-related secondary behaviors in 2014 and 2018, which exceeded the proportion of drivers seen using phones in both years. Relative to 2014, drivers were more likely to be observed manipulating an in-vehicle system, grooming themselves, or manipulating or holding an electronic device other than a phone after researchers adjusted for community, perceived driver gender and age, time of day and roadway situation.

Drivers in 2018 were less likely to be talking or singing while driving alone, smoking, or wearing headphones or earbuds. The prevalence of eating or drinking, talking or singing with a passenger present, wearing a Bluetooth device, or engaging in some other visible secondary behavior wasn’t significantly different between 2014 and 2018.

“We didn’t find evidence of an increase in distracted driving overall between the 2014 and 2018 roadside surveys,” Kidd says. “For cellphone-related distraction in general, we expect a continued shift in the way people interact with the devices as the technology evolves.”

The percentage of crash deaths related to distraction in recent years has hovered at about 8–10 percent of all crash deaths, data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show. During the past three years, distraction-affected crash deaths have trended downward. The number of fatalities in distraction-affected crashes fell 9.3 percent from 3,490 in 2016 to 3,166 in 2017, representing 8.5 percent of total fatalities for the year. In 2015, 3,526 people were killed in distraction-affected crashes.

Fatality data likely underestimate the number of deaths caused by distracted drivers. Despite efforts to determine cellphone use by drivers in crashes, such data continue to be difficult to collect as they largely depend on people truthfully telling law enforcement officers what they were doing or voluntarily handing over their phones for inspection.