The Mississippi Highway Patrol has started a new campaign to raise awareness of distracted driving and reduce the number of traffic fatalities, especially among teenage drivers.

The state highway patrol said in a recent news release that the campaign is called “Pay Attention or Pay a Fine” and runs through the month of October.

While texting while driving gets most of the attention (as it should), there are several other behaviors that lead to distracted driving and are just as dangerous. We’ve all been guilty of them. The phone rings while we’re driving down the road, and we answer it. Or we shove a hamburger in our mouth while driving. Or put on makeup while driving. Or try to find an address using the Maps app on our phone. The list goes on and on.

All of these, and the dozens of other things that distract us, lead to more traffic accidents. Officials say that last October, 65 people, including 15 teenagers, were killed in traffic accidents across the state. Some of those were almost assuredly because of distracted driving.

Below are some sobering statistics from www.distraction.gov about distracted driving:

• In 2013, 3,154 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involv­ing distracted drivers. This represents a 6.7 percent decrease in the number of fatalities recorded in 2012. Unfortunately, approximately 424,000 people were injured, which is an increase from the 421,000 people who were injured in 2012.

• 10 percent of drivers of all ages under the age of 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported as distracted at the time of the crash. This age group has the largest proportion of drivers who were distracted.

• At any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving, a number that has held steady since 2010.

• Five seconds is the average time your eyes are off the road while texting. When traveling at 55 mph, that’s enough time to cover the length of a football field blindfolded.

• A quarter of teens respond to a text message once or more every time they drive. Twenty percent of teens and 10 percent of parents admit that they have extended, multi-message text conversations while driving.

Those stats should scare all of us. So the next time you drive, put the cellphone — or hamburger — down. It might save your life and someone else’s.