April marked the end of the year-long “Phone in one hand, Ticket in the other” distracted driving campaign to look at the effects of high-visibility enforcement and public education to change the driving behaviors of motorists. In the course of handing out 18,600 tickets in two cities, there are key lessons learned from this pioneering program that will inspire future enforcement and lawmaking.

The Department of Transportation last year handed out $300,000 grants to police in Hartford, CT, and Syracuse, NY, in an effort to look at the impact of a campaign to reduce distracted driving modeled after the success of the agency’s national “Click it or Ticket” seat-belt enforcement program.

Hartford’s fourth and final enforcement wave ended on April 4th with over 2,600 tickets written and a year-long total of over 9,100. Syracuse’s last wave ended on April 17th also with over 2,600 tickets given out, bringing that city’s total to over 9,500 for the year. The final wave also resulted in the most tickets given out in both cities. One would think the motorists in those communities had already gotten the message and the numbers would go down by the end of the program, but it could also mean police were getting better at spotting these offenders.

The majority of tickets written were for hand-held cell phone use (both primary laws in Connecticut and New York). Texting was a less common offense in both areas. Hartford’s texting ban is a primary law and New York’s ban is only secondary, meaning police must pull over the driver for another offense. Texting is harder to spot than traditional cell-phone use, as the phone can be held low, away from view.

Full analysis on the impact of the program, including observed phone usage rates, is still being conducted. It is known that after the first two waves, handheld cell-phone use dropped 56 percent in Hartford and 38 percent in Syracuse. Texting was reduced 68 percent in Hartford and 42 percent in Syracuse.

In April, we rode along with Syracuse police to see the enforcement in action. Drivers we spoke with who were ticketed were aware of the laws, but their luck ran out. Since working on the program, Syracuse and Hartford police now feel this is an offense worth ticketing and plan to continue to enforce these laws, even without support from federal funds.

The likelihood of a national distracted driving campaign is low since all states don’t have the same laws. (Currently nine states ban hand-held cell phone use and 32 states ban texting.) However, some local communities around the country have already been doing their own enforcement campaigns. In the future, it may be up to the individual states, automakers, and cell-phone manufacturers to help reduce the over 5,400 people killed each year and over a half million injured from distracted behaviors behind the wheel.

See our special section on distracted driving.