Police crash reports are missing the full picture on distracted driving, and the gap is far larger than most people assumed. A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) finds that cellphone use in the moments before a collision is undercounted in police reports by a factor of at least seven.
That is not a rounding error. It points to a systematic blind spot in the data that lawmakers, insurers, and road safety researchers have long relied upon.
What the Telematics Data Revealed
IIHS researchers worked with Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), whose platform powers a range of safe-driving apps that drivers voluntarily enrol in. By linking anonymised CMT crash records to police-reported crashes across four states between 2021 and 2024, the team assembled a sample of nearly 17,000 matched incidents.
The telematics data showed that drivers were using their phones in the 30 seconds before impact in 7% of single-vehicle crashes and 8% of two-vehicle crashes. Police reports for those same crashes recorded cellphone use in less than 1%.
Active phone manipulation (tapping, swiping, or otherwise handling the device) accounted for the majority of recorded distraction. Hands-free and hand-held calls were comparatively rare. Passive use, such as having a screen unlocked for navigation, was roughly as common as active use in the lead-up to crashes.
Why Police Reports Fall Short
The reasons for the undercount are not difficult to understand. Many smartphone functions are simply invisible to bystanders. A driver glancing at a social media feed or a navigation prompt looks, from the outside, much the same as one paying full attention to the road.
Drivers are also unlikely to volunteer that they were distracted. IIHS President David Harkey noted that the reluctance of drivers to admit phone use, combined with the difficulty witnesses face in identifying exactly what a phone is being used for, makes accurate reporting at the scene extremely difficult.
Even when both police and telematics records indicated cellphone use, they agreed on the type of use in only three out of nearly 17,000 linked crashes. That mismatch matters, because in many jurisdictions only certain categories of phone use are illegal — meaning legal but still risky behaviours may go entirely unrecorded.
The Risk Behind the Numbers
The study reinforces what safety researchers have long argued: looking away from the road for just two seconds doubles the risk of a crash or near-crash event. Modern smartphones make that easier to do than ever.
Voice commands have made calling and texting somewhat safer, but gaming apps, video platforms, and social media introduce new temptations that demand sustained visual attention. A separate IIHS survey found that nearly 25% of drivers admitted to watching a video on their phone while driving at least once in the previous 30 days.
In response, 21 US states now ban drivers from holding a phone at all, rather than targeting specific behaviours such as texting. IIHS research indicates these broader prohibitions are more effective, partly because they are easier for officers to enforce — a phone in the hand is visible; what it is being used for often is not.
Why Accurate Data Matters
The practical consequence of underreporting extends well beyond statistics. If official crash data consistently understate the role of phone distraction, legislators may be slow to recognise that newer smartphone behaviours — ones not yet covered by existing laws — carry real risk.
Telematics data, the study suggests, could help close that gap. The technology already exists; the challenge is integrating it into the frameworks that inform road safety policy. As IIHS lead author Aimee Cox put it, the apps may be new, but the danger is not.
