April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and the Abbie DeLoach Foundation (ADF) is encouraging businesses, community partners, individuals and students to join its #HandsFreeForAbbie campaign by visiting the HandsFreeForAbbie.com website and taking the pledge. The hashtag was created in honor of Abbie, who was one of five Georgia Southern University nursing students to lose their lives on April 22, 2015 due to a distracted driver.

As part of its work in the community, ADF is helping raise awareness about distracted driving and encouraging drivers to commit to ending it. “It takes a continuous and conscious effort to do the right thing when behind the wheel,” said Jimmy DeLoach Jr., Abbie’s father and president of the Abbie DeLoach Foundation. “The pace of travel has picked up as the pandemic has waned, which means more people are on the roads — and more will be tempted to be distracted as they drive. Our goal is for every driver to make a commitment to safe driving to help save lives so that no parent, relative, friend or colleague will get a call about a tragic accident that stops their world.”

The #HandsFreeForAbbie campaign offers social media images for anybody to share so they can help spread the word, and it encourages everyone to visit HandsFreeForAbbie.com to make the commitment to drive phone-free.