It seems SGI's monthly spotlight for the month of October has most definitely put a spotlight on the problem of distracted driving. 

Throughout October, the province of Saskatchewan issued a record high 793 distracted driving offenses. That includes 688 cellphone tickets and 105 tickets for driving without due care.

"This represents the highest number of distracted drivng offenses ever reported in the four-year history of the Traffic Safety Spotlights. This tells us two things. It tells us that police are very focused and very good at catching distracted drives. It also tells us that they have a lot of distracted drives to catch because they wouldn't be writing as many tickets as they do if people weren't still driving distracted," said Tyler McMurchy, Manager of Media Relations with SGI. 

The consequences of receiving a ticket for distracted driving are high with the ticket costing you $ 270, along with 4 points on your safe driver recognition. Vehicles are also impounded for one week for repeat offenders. However, these fines are not deterring the number of tickets issued which is a cause of concern. 

"Police every month are writing 500 plus distracted driving tickets. It's still a concern out there especially when you think about it being the number one human factor in collisions and injuries and the number two cause of fatalities, second only to impaired driving. It's still a very significant traffic safety concern and there's still a lot of people that need to get the message."

The SGI Traffic Safety Spotlight for the month of December is impaired driving.