Last Friday a woman and two young children were killed when the SUV they were in crashed into the back of a dump truck that was stopped to make a turn on a highway in Coffey County.

Two days earlier, in Jefferson County, Mo., the driver of a tractor-trailor rig reported he took his eyes off the road only briefly before looking up, seeing that traffic was slowing in front of him, swerving and setting off a chain reaction wreck that killed two people.

Last month, two women were killed in a five-vehicle pileup in Leavenworth County caused by a driver who ran a stop sign.

Only in the Missouri accident did news reports note that a driver’s attention had been distracted before the collision occurred, but the circumstances of the other accidents certainly would indicate that, for some reason, the drivers in the other two fatalities also weren’t paying adequate attention to their driving.

Drivers who are distracted by talking or sending messages on cell phones have attracted a lot of attention — and some legislative action — lately, but drivers who don’t text shouldn’t be smug; there are plenty of other things that can fatally distract a driver. A screaming child, a spilled soft drink, tuning in a radio station all can draw a driver’s attention away from the road.

It’s sobering to realize how much can happen in front of a car during even a quick glance away from the road. Traveling at 65 mph, a vehicle covers about 95 feet per second. It will travel the length of a football field in just over three seconds.

That’s not very long, but it’s plenty of time to get a driver in trouble. It’s enough time to drift off a road and into a construction barrier and probably not enough time to react to a vehicle that, for some reason, has stopped in front of you.

Thanks to a law passed this year, it now is illegal to send or read text messages while driving. Drivers will get just a warning until Jan. 1, when fines will start to be levied. Admittedly, enforcement will be difficult, but it’s a positive law because it draws attention to — and sets consequences for — a driving hazard that appears to be growing at an alarming rate.

It also should act as a reminder to all Kansas drivers, that anything that takes their attention off the road even for a few seconds, can have deadly results.