COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — In the same week that an alleged distracted driver struck a telephone pole, Governor Mike DeWine laid out plans for keeping drivers’ hands on the wheel.

According to Ohio State Highway Patrol, there were nearly 25,000 distracted driving crashes in 2019-2020. Provisional data from the Ohio State Highway Patrol shows that 2020 was the deadliest year on Ohio’s roads in over a decade with 1,236 people killed in traffic crashes.

Ohio lags behind the rest of the US in its lack of distracted driving laws, said Phil Renaud, Executive Director of The Risk Institute at The Ohio State University. Ohio is one of only four states — including Montana — that currently doesn’t have hands-free laws. Two years after hands-free laws are passed, deaths go down significantly, statistics show.

“People under-estimate the risk of distracted driving. They have an over-confidence in their skills to be able to drive distracted, and that is completely wrong,” said Renaud.

“Not only the population, in general, has an overconfidence, the age group of 16-24 has disproportionate levels of inattention.” This age group also has a high number of fatalities.

Governor DeWine’s Hands-Free Ohio provisions would prohibit several actions while driving, such as: writing, sending, or reading text-based communications; watching or recording videos; taking photos or looking at images; live streaming; using apps; entering information into GPS navigation programs; dialing phone numbers; and holding a device for a phone call, according to the website.

Renaud says that drivers are lulled into a false sense of security by comfort and convenience. “People are feeling much more confident in that I’m surrounded by all these safety features, seat belting and airbags …”

This is paired with overconfidence in a person’s ability to operate cell phones, movie players, music, texting, and GPS while driving, creating disaster.

With limited exceptions, the Hands-Free Ohio provisions in Governor DeWine’s budget proposal will make driving while handling any electronic wireless device a primary offense for adult drivers and will increase fines for drivers who habitually use devices while driving. In cases where a driver using a device causes serious injury or death, the penalties will mirror those of drunken driving, the governor’s website said.

The Hands-Free Ohio provisions call for a six-month warning period in which law enforcement would issue warnings instead of citations as part of an educational campaign to spread awareness about the strengthened laws. The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) would also install road signs to alert drivers from other states to Ohio’s regulations, according to the governor’s website.