If you think you can't live without your mobile phone, the reality is, you might not be alive to answer the next call if it distracts you while you're driving.
And while it's a message pushed time and time again by police, officers still detected nearly 13,500 mobile phone offences in South Australia last year.
It's statistics like this which has sparked a joint crack down by both the Motor Accident Commission (MAC) and police on drivers who use mobiles while behind the wheel.
Drivers who talk, text, tweet or Facebook are being targeted.
Minister for Road Safety Jennifer Rankine said it's with good reason.
"Taking your eyes off the road for just three seconds - if you are travelling at 60km/h - means you will travel blind for 50 metres," she said.
"Imagine a child stepping out onto the road if you happen to be distracted for those few seconds. The consequences would be devastating."
MAC chief executive officer Jerome Maguire said inattention was the main cause of rear end crashes.
These claims make up 25 per cent of compulsory third party (CTP) insurance costs and cost the community about $85 million each year, he said.
It's not only phones which can cause a deadly distraction.
In August, a Port Lincoln man was sentenced over a crash in 2010 which killed two of his work colleagues on a remote stretch of road in the state's north.
He had been selecting music on an iPod in the moments before the car rolled.
