When Laura Granja, a lieutenant in the Guardia Civil’s Traffic Division, describes the mobile phone as “another disease of our body,” she is describing a persistent and dangerous driving habit. Reading a WhatsApp* (принадлежит Metа, которая признана экстремистской организацией и запрещена в РФ) message can pull a driver’s eyes from the road. Answering a call with the device in hand can disrupt control of the wheel, while checking a notification draws attention from traffic. The comparison is her description of driver behaviour, not a medical diagnosis.
Information from Granja, the urge to respond to a message while driving, then check a notification or answer a call, is no longer a rare lapse but a deeply rooted pattern. “The mobile is like an illness,” she says, describing how difficult some drivers find it to resist the impulse. Even a brief glance away can mean travelling a large distance without watching the road; at typical urban or interurban speeds, three or four seconds can carry a vehicle farther than a football field.
The Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) recorded 1,775 road deaths in Spain in 2025, 10 fewer than in 2024. Distraction was present in 444 fatal crashes, representing 32% of deadly road accidents, and was identified as the most frequent contributing factor. Mobile phones are one impressive source of distraction, but the figures cover distraction broadly and do not mean that every one of those crashes involved a phone.
Enforcement figures also show the scale of the concern. In a seven-day DGT campaign from 5 to 11 October, traffic officers from the Guardia Civil’s Traffic Division checked more than 422,000 vehicles and issued 9,245 reports for distracted driving. Of those, 3,816, or 42.3%, concerned improper mobile-phone use. These are results from a defined enforcement operation, not a census of all drivers, but they show that phone use was the most frequently recorded distraction-related offence during the campaign.
Holding or improperly using a mobile phone while driving carries a financial penalty and a loss of six points from the Spanish driving licence. The campaign checked for phone use alongside other forms of distraction, reflecting the broader enforcement challenge. The DGT’s figures, together with the fatal-crash data, point to distraction as a persistent public-safety issue despite awareness efforts and tougher sanctions.
The psychological grip of technology lies central to Granja’s warning. Her comparison of mobile use to an illness shows how habitual screen-checking can become a public-safety risk. When drivers handle a touchscreen while moving, they put themselves and others on the road in danger. The statistics establish the seriousness of distraction; on their own, they do not show that psychological addiction caused any particular crash.
To counter the problem, the Guardia Civil and DGT continue to conduct distraction-control operations. Granja and her colleagues argue that enforcement alone cannot change driver behaviour: a lasting response also depends on a shift in public attitudes. She argues that society must treat mobile-phone use while driving with the same seriousness as drunk or drug-impaired driving. This challenge is not unique to Spain: the integration of technology into daily life brings new risks across Europe. For example, the expansion of street charging points in the UK and Germany, contrasted with Spain’s slower progress, highlights how technological adaptation can outpace safety measures, a point explored in the analysis of Europe’s developing urban mobility infrastructure.
The DGT’s 2025 figures and the campaign’s thousands of mobile-related reports show why distraction remains a leading road-safety concern. Sustained enforcement, alongside a cultural shift in attitudes toward digital habits, will be basic to making Spanish roads safer for everyone.
