Travelers Institute^®: Distracted Driving – Every Second Matters^®

The Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers, launched the Every Second Matters education campaign in 2017 to help combat distracted driving. That year, more than 37,000 people died on U.S. roads, marking the end of a two-year period (2014-2016) that saw the highest rate increase in traffic fatalities in more than 50 years.¹ Since that time, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, risky driving behaviors have continued to have deadly consequences. In 2023, it is estimated that nearly 41,000 people lost their lives on U.S. roads.² As an industry leader with extensive claim insights into auto collision trends, Travelers is taking a leadership role in addressing distracted driving and other roadway safety issues.

The Every Second Matters campaign recognizes that every driver, passenger, cyclist and pedestrian has a role to play in combating distraction – such as texting while driving – and enhancing roadway safety. The Travelers Institute has hosted educational programs at universities and in communities across the United States and Canada. Travelers Institute staff have also highlighted the topic at a range of transportation safety conferences and insurance industry conferences. In 2024, the Travelers Institute continued raising awareness about the dangers of distracted driving through virtual presentations in the Wednesdays with Woodward^® webinar series.

The Every Second Matters campaign stands on three key principles:

• Creating a social stigma around distracted driving.
• Increasing understanding about situational awareness by all roadway users, including elevating the conversation about pedestrian and cyclist safety.
• Examining scalable technology and InsurTech solutions.

The campaign explores the latest approaches to help combat distracted driving, including how technology, which often contributes to distraction, can offer solutions to reduce distracted driving. In engaging thousands of people in this campaign, we hope it will compel people to put down their phones while driving. If our campaign saves even one life, it will have been worth the effort.

Key activities

• Online resources. Travelers is elevating the topic of distracted driving by offering a wide range of online resources and content for use by advocates, business leaders and the general public.
• Educational symposium series. The Travelers Institute has engaged policymakers, researchers, students, independent insurance agents and others through an educational symposium series throughout the United States and Canada, and virtually. In total, the Travelers Institute has held 96 events – primarily at universities and colleges – since the series launched in 2017. Speakers have included representatives from the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Safety Council and Travelers. For Distracted Driving Awareness Month in April, the Wednesdays with Woodward webinar series hosted a special livestreamed episode from the Lifesavers Conference in Denver, Colorado, exploring how technology can help promote safer driver habits and assess crash rates caused by distraction. Speakers from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and Cambridge Mobile Telematics participated. The Travelers Institute has also partnered with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) to conduct a livestreamed vehicle crash test at IIHS headquarters. In addition to the crash test, IIHS’ Raul Arbelaez walked the audience through the history of the organization, the state of roadway safety and how the organization evaluates vehicle crashworthiness. Another auto safety webinar highlighted the use, safety benefits and limitations of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and featured Dr. Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Transportation and Logistics, founder of the MIT AgeLab and Co-Director of the Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium at MIT. View these and other select Travelers Institute events here.
• Incentivizing safe behavior through telematics. Through consistent feedback and educational tips, Travelers customers can better understand their driving habits by participating in our IntelliDrive^® smartphone-based telematics programs. They also have the opportunity to influence their auto insurance premium based on their driving behaviors. IntelliDrive is a 90-day program available in 39 states and Canada. In 2024, Travelers built on IntelliDrive’s success and launched IntelliDrive 365 in four states. Throughout the life of the policy, IntelliDrive 365 will evaluate certain driving behaviors, provide positive reinforcement for safer driving behaviors and offer tips on how to improve based on personalized driving data. In both programs, customers with safer driving behaviors can see savings, while riskier driving habits may result in a higher premium.
• Digital education guides. In 2023, the Travelers Institute published an interactive guide based on its comprehensive Every Second Matters: Reducing Distracted Driving, One Voice at a Time report. Both digital publications encourage conversations about the importance of minimizing distracted driving. They provide a data-driven snapshot of roadway distraction and the traffic fatalities since the pandemic and outline concrete steps to help drivers reduce distractions.
• Cross-sector collaboration. Since the launch of the initiative in 2017, technology firms, universities, research centers, nonprofits, industry groups, student organizations and others have joined forces with the Travelers Institute to explore cross-sector synergies to mitigate distracted driving risk. The Travelers Institute is a member of the National Distracted Driving Coalition, which promotes innovative and collaborative approaches to create a traffic safety culture of attentive drivers.
• Unfinished Stories. Travelers worked with the families of victims of distracted driving to honor their loved ones through our Unfinished Stories campaign. The campaign, which launched in 2019, featured a series of stories imagining what could have been if their lives had not been cut short. For example, Travelers shared the story of a young boy named Zaadii, who was killed by a distracted driver. His passion for comics and superheroes was the inspiration for an innovative way to reach out to distracted drivers across the country. In partnership with his family, an exclusive comic book was created by two well-known comic book professionals – writer Gail Simone and artist Jim Calafiore. Other stories in the series include:
  • The Treehouse: Howard’s Unfinished Story
  • The Stage: Shreya’s Unfinished Story
  • The Route: Phil’s Unfinished Story
    
    
• Public television documentary. Travelers sponsored an Emmy-nominated documentary for public television titled “3 Seconds Behind the Wheel,” which follows the lives of eight drivers to monitor distracted driving behaviors. The film, released in 2018, is available on Amazon Prime. In addition, the film has been broadcast in 83 U.S. markets and was accepted by PBS International and distributed in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It continues to be available to a wide range of educational organizations, including schools, libraries, drivers’ education programs and more. The Travelers Institute has held numerous screenings of the documentary for attendees at colleges, transportation safety conferences and agent events.

Stakeholder engagement

• The general public. In 2024, for the third year in a row, the Travelers Institute promoted safe driving awareness during the holiday travel season. From Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, when millions of Americans hit the road to see loved ones, the Travelers Institute launched a media campaign providing tips to help drivers to stay safe on the roads. Through this initiative, the Travelers Institute participated in 30 television and radio interviews, which were syndicated across the United States, resulting in 1,006 airings. Media outlets also posted the coverage to their websites, and a post-campaign multimedia release was picked up by top-tier publications. In total, the campaign reached an audience of more than 95 million people.
• Employers. The Every Second Matters initiative challenges employers and employees to elevate distracted driving prevention within their organizations, facilitating discussions on creating a culture of safety in the workplace. Travelers Risk Control also advises Travelers customers on strategies to prevent distracted driving. Learn more.
• Independent insurance agents and brokers. The independent agents and brokers in our company’s network see the consequences of distracted driving with customers every day. Travelers offers resources to help them facilitate conversations with personal and business insurance customers to create safer roadways for all. In addition, the Travelers Institute partners with agent and broker associations that are also taking a leadership role by co-hosting university education programs.
• Students. The Travelers Institute is engaging with future risk management and insurance leaders on campuses across the United States and Canada regarding distracted driving, focusing both on the issue’s importance to the industry and on opportunities for innovation. Programming at universities of all sizes also helps increase visibility for Travelers and attract talent; the Travelers Talent Acquisition team leverages these programs to connect with students and showcase the opportunity to address important issues through a career at Travelers. Since the start of the initiative in 2017, we have held programs at Harvard University, St. John’s University, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. In addition, since 2009, Travelers has sponsored the annual Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles’ Teen Safe Driving Video Contest. In this contest, high school students from across Connecticut script, direct and edit short videos, educating their peers on teen driving laws and the dangers of distracted driving.
• Travelers employees. Consistent with our Every Second Matters platform, Travelers has an internal Driver Safety policy to help maintain the safety of Travelers employees who drive for Travelers, as well as a policy regarding Driving and the Use of Mobile Technology. These policies are supported by Travelers senior leaders, who regularly remind employees that their safety while driving is of paramount importance.

Related resources

• Travelers Institute^® Webinar: Crash and Learn LIVE Edition with IIHS
• Travelers Institute^® Webinar: Painting a Clearer Picture: How Technology Innovations Are Improving Distracted Driving Data and Advancing Safety
• Travelers Institute^® Webinar: ADAS in the Wild

¹ U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 2016 Fatal Motor Vehicle Crashes: Overview, October 2017, available at https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812456.
² U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities for the First Half (January-June) of 2024, September 2024, available at https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813633.