Oregon secures the position of the strictest state for texting while driving with a maximum fine of $1,000 for the offense, which is 10 times the median fine in the U.S., according to a recent study from Rosenblum Law.

Easily the second-strictest state, Utah will fine drivers as much as $750 for a first offense of texting behind the wheel. In addition, the offense carries 50 points; those who accrue 200 points in three years can have their license suspended.

Illinois ranks third — hitting drivers where it hurts most as opposed to in their pocketbooks. While the $75 penalty may seem mild, a conviction for texting means 10 points on a license. What’s more, the state can suspend a license that accrues 15 or more points over a 4-year period — making Illinois the state most likely to suspend a license for texting.

Wisconsin ranks fourth for being tough on texting. A texting ticket in the state can set drivers back as much as $400. It will also result in four points on a license, and Wisconsin can suspend any license with 12 or more points on it.

Alaska can be pretty cold when it comes to drivers who text — taking the fifth spot for strictest state. In fact, Alaska previously had the most aggressive anti-texting laws on the books, charging drivers with a misdemeanor criminal offense.

In 2016, Alaska changed texting behind the wheel to a moving violation with a fine of up to $500 and two points on one’s license. A driver who reaches 12 points in 12 months or 18 points in 24 months can have a license suspended.

The top five most lenient states for texting include Montana, which imposes no fine and no points, followed by California with a $20 fine, New Mexico ($25), South Carolina ($25), and Iowa ($30). None of these states give motorists points on their license for texting behind the wheel.

Technology is everywhere these days and like most drivers, you’ve probably noticed it in your car, too. Along with the more obvious in-dash features like access to playlists, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi—all things that can cause distraction in the car—another technology, one that can help you and your teen be a safer driver, is also emerging.

MyCarDoesWhat.org is a new program from the National Safety Council and the University of Iowa. Like DriveitHOME, MyCarDoesWhat is backed by research and its goal is to educate drivers about the safety features on their cars—how they work and how to use them properly.

This is a great resource for parents coaching teen drivers. The safety features now available on cars are probably different from what was available when you were learning to drive. Your teen has the benefit of growing up with these features and they will undoubtedly become a larger part of their driving experience.

MyCarDoesWhat covers a wide range of safety features, including the latest technology like Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) and Lane Departure Warnings, which can actually assist the driver in preventing crashes.

Even if you don’t have a car with the latest features, MyCarDoesWhat covers many you probably do have like Anti-Lock Braking Systems (ABS), Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS)—each of which are government mandates for all new cars.

MyCarDoesWhat is packed full of videos, graphics and other resources—they even have a game for your Android or iOS device—which can help you and your teen recognize and utilize the safety features on your car.

Your teen will still need to learn the basics. They need to know how to pump the brakes in case they are in a vehicle without ABS. They should always check blind spots, even with a blind spot monitor. And a backup camera is no replacement for turning to look back and make sure there are no children, pets or objects behind the car befroe going into reverse.

Make sure your teen knows they are their car’s best safety feature and that these features are there to assist—not replace—their judgment.

Article originally found on nsc.org.

Nearly 36,600 people died on US roadways last year, a decrease of 2.4 percent from 2017, according to recently released figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled also decreased by 3.4 percent, from 1.17 in 2017 to 1.13 in 2018. The NHTSA says it is the lowest fatality rate since 2014.

That all sounds encouraging, but it’s really only good news for those of us driving or riding in cars. Everyone else, especially vulnerable road users like pedestrians and bicyclists, is being killed at an alarming rate. The number of pedestrians killed — 6,283, an increase of 3.4 percent from the previous year — was the highest such number since 1990.

Cyclists are faring even worse: 857 were killed in 2018, an increase of 6.3 percent. Female cyclists are especially at risk: the number of women killed while cycling shot up 29.2 percent in 2018, compared to just 3.2 percent for men.

“It is good news that drivers and occupants have seen a decline, but the increases for cyclists and pedestrians show that a new trend has taken hold where more vulnerable road users are increasingly being killed,” said Angie Schmitt, former national reporter for StreetsBlog who is writing a book about the pedestrian safety crisis. “And it’s not going away.”

The rise in pedestrian and cyclist deaths, and the overall decline in traffic fatalities, comes at a time when automakers are rolling out more safety technology, such as automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assistance, and pedestrian detection. New cars now come standard with cameras, radars, and other sensors meant to detect imminent collisions or help drivers avoid danger. In some cases, the car will apply the brakes to avoid a crash if drivers don’t react in time.

But new safety technology doesn’t automatically mean fewer crashes. While automakers are getting better at protecting the people who buy their cars, they still aren’t doing enough to minimize the carnage inflicted by their customers. The American Automobile Association (AAA) conducted a series of tests recently using vehicles with automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection alerts on a closed course with dummy pedestrians. The vehicles struck the dummy pedestrians that were crossing the road 60 percent of the time — and this was in daylight hours at speeds of 20 mph.

New car technology may be hit or miss during the daytime, but at night, it is almost always hit — and it’s specifically pedestrians who are the victims. Of the pedestrians killed in 2018, 76 percent were hit after dark, according to the NHTSA data. AAA’s test of high-tech detection systems found them to be almost completely ineffective at night.

The NHTSA said it was exploring ways to reduce pedestrian and cyclist death rates, perhaps through changes to its vehicle crash test program. Still, the agency sought to highlight the fact that “many” of the pedestrians who were killed by drivers had alcohol in their systems, a fact that rankled some safety advocates. “To the extent that they use it to blame victims, I think it’s harmful,” Schmitt said.

Ken Kolosh, who directs the National Safety Council’s statistical reporting and statistical estimating systems, said these statistics highlight the inadequacies in our infrastructure where pedestrians are not appropriately protected from fast-moving vehicles.

“Many of these people were trying to do the right thing by not getting behind the wheel, and may have unwittingly put themselves in a dangerous situation,” Kolosh said. “We need to think as a society about how people are forced to walk in unsafe environments, where vehicles and other vulnerable road users are not appropriately separated or accommodated.”

For years, the number of people killed in rural communities outpaced those killed in cities. But that flipped in 2016, as more people moved to cities and the number of vehicle miles traveled spiked. Urban fatalities increased by 34 percent since 2009; rural fatalities declined by 15 percent, the NHTSA says.

Cities have been slow to respond by making the improvements necessary to separate cars from pedestrians and cyclists, and the federal government has largely been absent, focused more on rolling back vehicle emissions standards than helping cities curb traffic fatalities. A bipartisan coalition in Congress just introduced a bill that would make federal funding available to cities for Vision Zero projects aimed at reducing the number of traffic fatalities to zero. But its unclear what can actually get passed and signed into law by the president given the polarized environment.

“We need a much stronger federal commitment to the kinds of amenities that keep cyclists and pedestrians safe: things like sidewalks, [Americans with Disabilities Act] ramps, crosswalk work, and bike lanes,” Schmitt said. “And we need federal regulations that finally address how vehicle design impacts pedestrian safety.”

The correlation between vehicle design and pedestrian deaths is pretty stark. Unsurprisingly, SUVs are continuing to wreak havoc on the roads. While the people driving SUVs are slightly safer (1.6 percent decrease in SUV occupant deaths in 2018, according to the NHTSA), the number of pedestrians killed by those drivers has skyrocketed by 81 percent in the last decade, according to a report released last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

This is mostly because of the way SUVs are designed: larger bodies and higher carriages mean pedestrians are more likely to suffer deadly blows to the head and torso. Higher clearances mean victims are more likely to get trapped underneath a speeding SUV instead of pushed onto the hood or off to the side.

Speed is also a factor because SUVs have more horsepower than a typical sedan. A recent investigation by USA Today and the Detroit Free Press found that the growing popularity of SUVs accounts for the alarming rise in pedestrian deaths.

But given Americans’ love for their giant SUVs and trucks, it’s doubtful that reports about increased pedestrian deaths will satiate the desire for bigger vehicle types. Driver distraction, while responsible for fewer deaths in 2018, is still a problem. The NHTSA says that the number of fatalities in distraction-affected crashes was 2,841, or 7.8 percent of total fatalities in 2018. That’s a 12.4 percent decrease from 3,242 in 2017.

“We should continue to be concerned about distraction,” Kolosh said. “It’s not just cell phones. It’s all technologies. We’re pretty used to seeing people text at red lights.”

Smartphone manufacturers have introduced a number of new features designed to minimize their use by drivers, but there’s no silver bullet. “Technology got us into this problem and tech can help get us out of this problem to some extent,” Kolosh said. “But it will come down to the individual.”