THIRTY-FIVE PAGES INTO the 169-page South Carolina Driver's Manual is a single-sentence admonition about driving defensively: "Pay attention to your driving."

We suppose it's better than nothing. But it can hardly be called an adequate advisory to address the single largest cause of automobile collisions in this state and nation: distracted driving.

Like too many other areas where our state government doesn't do what it should to provide for the public health, safety and welfare, this omission is far from the norm across the nation. Although only six states' driver's manuals include what the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the Governors Highway Safety Administration call comprehensive sections on the dangers of distracted driving, South Carolina sticks out as one of just nine states that don't address the issue at all. (We do, however, include an entire section, stretched over two pages and including a cartoon, that reminds drivers that littering is against the law.)

Clearly, the lack of some basic advice can't be blamed entirely for our alarmingly high highway death rate. Just as clearly, it must be considered among the factors that make ours the third-most deadly roads in the nation.

It would be nice to think that common sense would be enough to get drivers to focus on driving and not on lunch or the radio or their passenger or the cell phone -- or that they don't need to read while driving or drive while emotional. But obviously it doesn't; even the most conscientious of us can sometimes forget just how dangerous those distractions are. If we all realized or remembered that, distracted driving wouldn't be the cause of up to half of all traffic accidents. So if common sense isn't getting the job done, it's incumbent upon the state, which licenses drivers, to teach drivers how essential it is to focus first and foremost on driving.

While current drivers will take some other efforts, the simple solution for new drivers comes from AAA and the Governors Highway Safety Administration, through model language they suggest all states include in driver's manuals, discussing the types and causes of driver distractions, how to deal with the most common distractions and how to manage both the emotional and technological distractions while driving.

The proposal grows out of a study by University of North Carolina researchers, which found that all drivers allow themselves to be distracted by something inside of their vehicles, and 90 percent by something outside of their vehicles. The most common distractions involved reaching for something in the vehicle; the most time-consuming distractions involved talking with passengers. The most chilling finding: Drivers were engaged in some form of potentially distracting activity up to 16 percent of the total time their vehicles were moving. And this study was done on volunteers who had video cameras placed in their cars; if anything, the unmonitored drivers would be distracted even more.

As Peter Kissinger, president of the AAA foundation, explained: "People often underestimate the seriousness of distractions because not every distraction leads to a crash. But if you are distracted just when someone pulls out in front of you, your lack of attention can be catastrophic."

We will never be able to stop all drivers from taking unnecessary risks. But many people are conscientious enough that they will be more careful if they only realize just how dangerous their inattention can be.