Minnesota Department of Public Safety hopes new data will help curb ‘troubling’ distracted driving

Officials with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety (DPS) will soon have access to data they hope will help them identify the causes of distracted driving and find ways to get motorists to change their behavior.

“There are far too many [drivers] who are unnecessarily distracted with electronic devices,” said Mike Hanson, director of the Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), a division of DPS. “We want to eliminate the problem and save lives.”

Minnesota is one of three states recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the Governors Highway Safety Association to analyze traffic safety data to make roads safer.

In a first-of-its-kind effort, the Office of Traffic Safety will get three months of data from Michelin Mobility Intelligence (MMI). MMI gathered information on drivers in Hennepin County who use safe driving apps, such those from insurance companies, that measure phone use, speeding, sudden braking and other driving behaviors.

The data has been anonymized and cannot be traced back to a driver, Hanson said.

Brandon Walters, a crash coordinator with OTS, said his office will layer other DPS data on top of information supplied by MMI to identify “hot spots” where there may be lots of phone handling by drivers. Officials will craft a response, which could include enforcement, education and public outreach.

“Our goal is to gain insight into the dangerous behavior, then research to do a deeper dive” to learn who, what, when, where and why people drive distracted, Walters said.

Every year from 2019 through 2023, an average of 29 people died in traffic crashes related to distracted driving in Minnesota and 146 suffered life-changing injuries, according to DPS data. The data also showed there were 30,000 crashes in which distracted driving was a factor during the same time period.

During a monthlong enforcement effort in April, which was National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, law enforcement across the state issued more than 5,300 citations to drivers, a 57% increase over last year when a similar campaign was carried out.

“Troubling,” Hanson said.

Minnesota law prohibits motorists from holding a phone or electronic device, reading or composing emails or text messages, streaming videos or accessing the internet while behind the wheel. Drivers can touch their phone once to make a call, send voice-activated text messages or listen to podcasts. But multiple touches, such as dialing a phone number or punching in GPS coordinates, are outlawed.

DPS will get the data later this month and will begin mining the numbers in hopes of gaining insight to “solve one of the toughest traffic safety issues we have on Minnesota roads,” Hanson said. “This is something we have never done before.”

Hanson said DPS would make a decision later if the agency will expand the project to other counties.

The dive into distracted driving comes as law enforcement tries to tackle another vexing problem: motorists who drive while impaired. State troopers, deputies and local police will be conducting a DWI enforcement campaign through Sept. 2.

Minnesota is on pace to surpass 400 traffic deaths from all causes this year, and the 269 deaths as of Tuesday was 39 more than at this time last year, OTS said.

“That is a horrific number,” Hanson said. With the Labor Day holiday approaching, Hanson encouraged motorists to not drive while distracted or impaired, to wear their seat belts and to obey speed limits.

“Let’s have a fatal-free Labor Day weekend,” Hanson said. “We can do this.”