MSP says distracted driving crashes are down 1 year after hands-free driving law

It's been a little over a year since Michigan's hands-free driving law went into affect , meaning drivers can't hold onto their phone while behind the wheel.

Now, new numbers show the law is working, to prevent serious and even deadly crashes.

I have been looking at the numbers, and I found that crashes caused by both cell phones and distracted driving are down. It's encouraging numbers for Steve Kiefer, whose son would still be alive, had it not been for a distracted driver.

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“We’ve watched all of his friends go through their college years, graduate, and now a few of them are getting married, so every time you are in these events you just think you know what would Mitchel be doing now," Steve said.

Steve's son, Mitchel, was on the way to Michigan State University when he was rear-ended by a distracted driving, forcing him into oncoming traffic. This September will mark eight years since Steve lost his son.

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"What has that time been like without him?" I asked Steve.

“Well, you know there is not a day that goes by that we don’t think about Mitchel, and of course we started the Kiefer Foundation to honor his legacy and bring an end to distracted driving," Steve responded.

It took five years full of ups and downs, but eventually the Kiefer foundation reached it's goal: a hands-free law on the books in Michigan.

“Does it help honor his memory by knowing that people are putting their cell phones down?” I asked Steve.

“It sure does," he said. "You know it is interesting with these kinds of things, it’s hard to count things that don’t happen right, so we don’t really know how many lives we have saved.”

But the numbers from Michigan State Police indicate lives have been saved.

There were 2,284 crashes where a cell phone was involved in 2023. That's down by 121 crashes from the year before, a five percent decrease.

There were 15,136 crashes involving distracted driving in 2023. That is down 305 crashes, or two percent, from the year before.

“Are these encouraging numbers for you guys?” I asked First Lt. Michael Show with MSP.

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"They are, any time that you have a little bit of a dip in there, now lets not get carried away, I think you can still drive down the road today and still see somebody on their cell phone," Shaw said. "You don’t have to be a police officer to see that, but at least we are getting some progress in those numbers.”

Shaw told me it will take 4-5 years to look at where the trend goes from here. He says the new law does make it easier to crack down on distracted driving and cell phone use.

“The law that was in effect prior to that was strictly texting and driving, so it made it a lot harder for us to actually enforce that law cause when you went into court if someone said 'well I wasn’t texting your honor', we had to prove that they were, which is pretty tough to do," Shaw said.

But now, all police have to look for is just the phone itself.

“Doesn’t matter if you are just hanging onto it, your texting, your using a gps watching Netflix, whatever you are doing on that phone, it's just that mere fact of having it in your hand that makes it a lot easier to enforce," Shaw said.

Shaw tells me over the time of the law, MSP has been able to write about 5,000 traffic tickets or give verbal warnings. As for Steve and the Kiefer Foundation , the work continues, getting hands-free laws on the books in all 50 states.

“It feels good that we are making progress, we know we are saving lives, but we know there is a lot more to do.”

Shaw told me they will continue to look for distracted drivers, but said speeding has been contributing to a loss of life, so that is something troopers are on the lookout for as well.