WASHINGTON — Texting while driving can be hazardous to your health.

In case you needed another study to tell you that, here’s one via San Diego-based driver-monitoring company, SmartDrive:

SmartDrive has just released a study that says “Drivers with the most distracted driving events are 7.4 times more likely to be involved in a collision or a near-collision.”

And they’re publishing the study just in time for the U.S. government-sponsored “Distracting Driving Summit,” which started in the American capitol this week.

On top of repairing the economy and fighting two real wars, the American government has declared distracted driving an "epidemic" and is bent on stamping it out with legislation – especially among truck drivers.

The SmartDrive study analyzed hard-braking, swerving and other bad-driving events and they compared them to the information they gathered from their in-cab cameras, which are part of the SmartDrive system.

By looking at the driver actions in the 15 seconds leading up to the close calls (or in some cases, actually collisions,) the analysts saw that a majority of the drivers were distracted before they got into trouble.

“Commercial drivers with the highest number of distracted-driving observations were 7.4 times more likely to be involved in a collision or near-collision when compared to drivers with the lowest number of distractions, “ the study states.

And the top three activities: texting or using a hand-held GPS device, eating, or talking on the phone.

The study also shows that drivers who are more experienced and who know they are being observed do fewer dumb things behind the wheel.

“The SmartDrive Distracted Driving Index showed that just 5 percent of new drivers in the SmartDrive Safety program accounted for 33 percent of all recorded distracted driving incidents, and that they were responsible for 57 percent of all mobile phone incidents captured and 47 percent of all operating-handheld-device incidents.”

So, in other words, ST&D. If you need a definition on that texting acronym, or those in the headline for this story, click here.