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Distracted driving: How safe are the roads around your child's school?

A new interactive map is helping parents track how safe the roads are around their children's schools.

As kids fill the classrooms for the school year, a new tool is helping parents track how safe the roads are around their children's schools.

The interactive map scores each state, county and individual school based on data that shows how frequently drivers use their phone in school zones.

Zendrive, a tech company that measures driver safety using phone sensors, developed the map, which takes into account factors like aggressive acceleration, hard braking and distracted phone use.

Tennessee scored a B- and ranked 22nd in the country.

Knox County scored a D, ranking 75th out of 81 Tennessee counties Zendrive included in their data.

The study found that the more urban the county, the riskier the school roads. The most dangerous time for accidents in school zones is between 4 and 5 p.m.

Knox County Schools has been working to educate people about distracted driving and has focused on school bus safety, a problem they have seen already in the first weeks of school.

"Over the last two weeks, we have had our bus drivers report over 60 incidents where individuals ran the bus stop arms," said Russ Oaks, chief operating officer of Knox County Schools. "People are very aware of where the school zones are because those are static locations. They're not always aware of where the bus stops are because they aren't there all of the time."

Knox County Schools will participate in National School Bus Safety Month this October to help raise awareness for school zone safety.

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