The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that at any given time, around 660,000 drivers are using their phones while behind the wheel.
For a lot of drivers, shooting off a quick text might just take five seconds. But for people going 55 miles per hour, that’s enough time to travel the length of a football field.
“There is no safe way to text while driving,” Jay Callaghan, a police chief at the Colorado Department of Transportation, said in a statement.
“Taking your eyes off the road to send a text or check a social media feed — even for just a second — puts people at risk,” he stressed. “The best idea is to take care of potential distractions before even starting your vehicle.”
It’s something that nearly everyone can agree is wrong. And yet it remains a consistent problem.
According to a survey conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, roughly 93% of drivers consider hand-held cell phone use as dangerous.
Even so, 38% admitted to reading a text or email while driving, and another 27% reported sending a text or email from behind the wheel.
Those actions have real-world consequences.
The NHTSA reports that driving while texting is six times more dangerous than driving drunk — and 3,308 people were killed by distracted driving in 2022.
Although Tori Merrill — a mom based in Pleasant Grove, Utah — has never lost a loved one in a car crash, it’s a worry that weighs on her mind.
“I have teenage drivers and so it’s important to me that they’re safe and that they’re being safe,” Merrill said in an interview with KSL News Radio.
Merrill and her son Logan, a former Eagle Scout, first came up with the idea for focus bags five years ago, but it wasn’t until last year that their design fully came to fruition.
Although the name has switched — from the “just don’t bag” to the “focus bag” — the design has stayed consistent.
Each colorful, phone-sized bag comes with a drawstring top that cinches with a small toggle. It’s designed to keep people’s phones out of their hands, and out of sight, during the entirety of their drive.
“That way, you have to think twice if you really want to answer that text,” Merrill said.
To date, Merrill, her son, and local volunteers have handsewn over 4,000 focus bags.
In November, Merrill even teamed up with Zero Fatalities — a public safety program funded by the Utah Department of Transportation — to distribute over 1,000 bags to young drivers.
“I had an amazing time at the UDOT conference doing a service project with Zero Fatalities!!” Merrill shared on the “Focus Bags” Facebook page.
“Half [of the bags] we gave out at the conference,” she wrote, “and half we are using to give out at the Zero Fatalities parent meetings each new driver has to attend in order to obtain their license.”
“I love being a part of something that makes a difference!”
Zero Fatalities offers resources to keep roadways safe through parent-teen seminars, safety seminars, and local PSAs.
Their name doubles as a mission, with the goal of achieving zero roadway fatalities in Utah.
“Some people may think zero is an impossible goal, but when it comes to the lives of your friends and family, would any other number be acceptable to you?” the program’s website asks.
“Reaching this goal starts with you.”
Merrill’s happy to have a part in that mission, and she won’t be stopping anytime soon.
“It’s just something in my gut that says I need to keep doing this,” she said, “just keep giving these out, just keep protecting people.”
Header image via Jonathan Chukwudifu / Pexels
