GREENSBORO, N.C. -- One in five crashes in North Carolina is the result of distracted driving.

• The city produced a plan to inform people of the dangers.
• City officials looked into creating a stricter law for the city, but when that fell through they put their support behind a current state bill to make North Carolina a hands free state.
• They hope they can show people that by making the simple decision to stay off their phone while driving, they can save lives.

That's according to Lydia McIntyre, a senior transportation planning engineer for the City of Greensboro. She says those numbers are preventable, which is why the city produced a plan to inform people of the dangers.

"Education and encouragement, and the biggest focus there is to make people aware that it does matter that we are seeing crashes that result in fatalities and serious injuries because people were not paying attention when they were behind the wheel of the car," McIntyre said.

City officials looked into creating a stricter law for the city, but when that fell through they put their support behind a current state bill to make North Carolina a hands free state.

Until then, they hope they can show people that by making the simple decision to stay off their phone while driving, they can save lives.

"Doing those little small things can help us reach that goal that seems lofty of zero, but if everyone would say 'I'm going to make one small change today," then we could start to make things turn around and those numbers decrease."