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Keller @ Large: Latest Traffic Numbers Further Proof To Put The Phone Down

BOSTON (CBS) – Are you listening to me in the car right now? Of course you're not fiddling with the radio – there's no need to, you found the right station.

But there's a pretty good chance you are handling your smart phone, talking on it, checking texts or emails on it, searching for something online.

And if so, you should realize you're flirting with disaster.

According to the latest figures from the National Safety Council, an estimated 40,000 Americans were killed in car crashes last year. That horrific figure is up six percent from 2015, up 14% from 2014, as the Council puts it, "the most dramatic two-year escalation since 1964."

And Massachusetts is not immune from this deadly trend. Nearly 400 of us died on the roads last year, a double-digit increase.

The experts say there are a range of reasons for this: lower gas prices putting more people on the roads, drunken and impaired driving, speeding, all the usual suspects. But the phones are the wild-card factor, the addictive new technology that is increasingly turning us into a nation of reckless phone zombies.

The solutions to this carnage are painfully simple – don't drive impaired, slow down, and most of all, put the darn phone away until you get where you're going or find a place to pull over.

But as the head of the Safety Council puts it: "Our complacency is killing us…. We know what needs to be done; we just haven't done it."

This is amazing and troubling, when you consider all the effort we put into neutralizing far less potent threats, like crime or terrorism.

So let's try to prove the experts wrong.

Put the phone down.

There is absolutely nothing happening on it that's worth your life, or mine.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

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