LaHood Announces New Group to Fight Distracted Driving

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced Tuesday the creation of FocusDriven, an organization dedicated to fighting distracted driving.

The announcement comes as a result of September's Distracted Driving Summit, a meeting in Washington in which public officials, law enforcement, victims and other spoke about the dangers of distracted driving, the Department of Transportation said in a statement.

FocusDriven will be supported by DOT and the National Safety Council, a transportation safety advocacy group. LaHood said Tuesday that he hoped FocusDriven “can do for distracted driving what groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving have done (for drunk driving).”

Jennifer Smith, an advocate against distracted driving, will lead the new group, DOT said.

LaHood said last year he intended to ban texting by truck drivers and other commercial operators.

During his remarks Tuesday, he said DOT was "working on (those) rules."