COLUMBUS, Ohio – America’s top transport regulator thinks truck drivers should honk their horns when they see four-wheeler drivers using cellphones.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and his boss Barack Obama have called distracted driving an "epidemic" and they believe that a lot of lives will be saved if car drivers put down their BlackBerries and cell phones when they’re behind the wheel.

To that end, LaHood recently appealed to truckers to "give them [car drivers on cells] a honk or two. Or three."

"You all are ahead of the curve on this; you all have set a standard. We appreciate that," Lahood recently said in a speech he made at the National Truck Driving Championships.

(Of course, in the interest of keeping drivers’ eyes on the road, a reasonable argument could be made that an air horn blast from behind a driver’s ear could be a touch distracting too).

According to the US DOT, about 6,000 people were killed and a half-million were injured last year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction. That includes drivers talking on cell phones and texting.