April is Distracted Driving Month and the impact of causing a serious injury or fatality can be astronomical

It begins with the financial burden, which can be enormous, says the Minnesota Safety Council's Lisa Kons.

"If I suffer from a severe brain trauma today, I can't do what I'm doing for the rest of my life," Kons explains. "That has an economic impact, not only to you, your family, but to our state. Because if it's that severe of a crash, your insurance is probably going to run out in about six months. But then there's things that you're going to need to stay alive."

The emotional toll can be more severe.

"Every conversation we have, the comment is made, 'there isn't a day in my life, that I don't think about what I've done.' The counseling that it has taken to get back to just being at a midline basis, the guilt," she explains.

The theory into this theme goes much deeper, and Kons message is simple: put your phone away.

"Trying to make people think about it in the sense, they don't want to live without me, and I don't want to live without them," Kons adds. "So it's really talking to that loved one. If there's a crash, a fatality and injury, it's happening because of something that's so incredibly preventable."