CHICAGO — Betcha didn’t know that today, Thursday, April 21, 2011, is National Distracted Driving Awareness Day.

Not only that, but across the U.S., all of April has been designated National Distracted Driving Awareness month. (Don’t feel bad for not knowing. You were no doubt paying attention to important issues.)

One of the events you’re missing?

American Department of Transport DOT boss Ray LaHood is speaking here in the windy city at the Illinois Distracted Driving “Summit” in Chicago.

And if your trucks are going through Minnesota today, tell your drivers to mind their mics with extra caution because state troopers have dubbed today “Distracted Driving Enforcement Day.”

Expect to hear more as an increasing number of politicians get distracted driving into their crosshairs.

And finally, just in time for the campaign, the Texas-based driver-monitoring company SmartDrive Systems has just released another of its studies alerting the general public to the horrors of driving while distracted.

(SmartDrive analyzed more than 13.8 million video events throughout 2010 involving 34,456 commercial drivers.)

The Reader’s Digest version of the findings? “The report shows that the top 5 percent of drivers with the most driving distractions were distracted 67 percent of the time during which a risky driving maneuver was observed.

"That’s nearly six times more often than the rest of the drivers."

Aren’t you glad to know your drivers are better than everybody else’s and don’t do dumb things behind the wheel?

Have a safe and happy Easter weekend.