U.S. study shows too many still texting while driving
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has just released the results of a U.S. study done last year from January to March and its top-line summary was that drivers said they use their smartphones more often for calls than for texting, reading or sending emails.
Reading that, you might be inclined to take it as a good news story. After all, if we’re talking more than we’re texting, we must be texting less, right? Wrong.
When you dig a little deeper, it turns out that 38 per cent of drivers surveyed said they had read emails or texts while driving during the last month and a third reported that they sent emails or texts.
These percentages are in line with the 2017 Traffic Safety Culture Index survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, which found that about a third of respondents said they had typed or sent a text or email while driving in the previous 30 days.
In other words, we haven’t changed our habits of texting while driving at all. Some 38 per cent of us still do this incredibly dangerous activity while piloting more than 1,500 kilograms of steel and sheet metal through streets populated with cyclists, pedestrians and other drivers.
That’s some depressing news right there. Though if you’re looking for a silver lining (there isn’t one), at least we can take some satisfaction in the fact that most of the respondents who said they frequently talk while driving do so using a hands-free and/or voice-activated systems.
While that’s better than holding the phone while talking, there’s a ridiculous number of folks who still do this, too.
Thirty-one per cent of respondents in states without a handheld phone ban reported that they sometimes engage in handheld conversations compared with 14 per cent of drivers surveyed in states with a hand-held phone ban. Driving.ca