With the start of National Distracted Driving Awareness Month comes the 2022 version of the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety's "U Drive. U Text. U Pay." initiative, and a companion social and digital media campaign to remind Garden State motorists to put their phones down behind the wheel...
Just 1 in 25 people got behind the wheel more often in the early months of COVID, but those drivers tended to skew younger and disproportionately male, a traditionally riskier population.
From 2010 through 2019 in New Jersey, these "summer" days, equating to just over 25% of the year, accounted for 29% of deaths in crashes involving teen drivers, including 81 drivers themselves.