Young drivers not the only age group taking risks on US roads

Young drivers aren’t alone in behaving badly on United States roads, a trend that could be contributing to a spike in highway deaths.

More than half of drivers in every age group have texted behind the wheel, run a red light or driven faster than the speed limit in the last 30 days, according to a new study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Younger motorists are the worst offenders. Eighty-eight percent of drivers ages 19 to 24 admitted to at least one of those behaviors. But even mature drivers skirted the rules more often than researchers expected. For instance, 10 percent of drivers between 60 and 74 have texted or sent an email from behind the wheel, while 37 percent of drivers over 75 said they’d driven through a light that had just turned red.

“It was a surprise that there were relatively high rates of these behaviors among the drivers we think of as safer,” said Lindsay Arnold, a research associate with the AAA Foundation.

Arnold said the responses were similar to those in past years, indicating a troubling trend. In 2015, US traffic deaths rose 7 percent to 35,092, the largest single-year increase in five decades. They’re expected to rise again in 2016 when that data is finalized.

“It points to the need to improve driver behavior if we’re going to reverse this alarming trend,” Arnold said.

The study found broad agreement on some issues. Eighty-seven percent of motorists said they have never driven when they thought they were close to the legal alcohol limit. Ninety-five percent said they had never driven within an hour of using marijuana.

Eighty-eight percent of drivers say it’s unacceptable to drive without a seat belt, and 82 percent support laws requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets.

But drivers’ behavior sometimes contradicted their own instincts. More than threequarters of drivers say it’s unacceptable to text or email while driving, but 31 percent had done so in the last month and 8 percent do so often.

Ninety-sixpercentofdrivers say drowsy driving is a serious safety threat, but 29 percent had recently driven when they were so tired they had trouble keeping their eyes open.

The study, which questioned 2,511 licensed drivers aged 16 and over, also found that drivers aged 40-59 were the most likely to use a handsfree phone in the car. Drivers ages 16-18 and 75 or older were the most likely to hold their phones and talk while driving.