A third of teens say they’ve texted while driving

Suzanne Choney • E-mail

A third of teens ages 16 and 17 say they have texted while driving and 48 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

While those findings may not surprise some, Pew senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart said she was surprised "to hear (from teens) about how it’s often parents or other adults who are doing the texting or talking and driving, and how for many teens, this is scary or worrisome behavior."

For its Teens and Distracted Driving study, Pew surveyed 800 teens ages 12 to 17 between June and September. The non-partisan organization also conducted nine focus groups with 74 additional teens in the cities of Ann Arbor, Mich., Denver, Atlanta and New York between June and October, in conjunction with the University of Michigan.

"Much of the public discussion around these behaviors has focused on teens as young, inexperienced drivers, but some of the adults in these young peoples' lives are clearly not setting the best example either," said Mary Madden, Pew senior research specialist who also worked on the survey.

"Teens spoke not only of adults texting at the wheel, but also fumbling with GPS devices and being distracted because they're talking on the phone constantly," she said. "And the reactions from the teens we spoke with ranged from being really scared by these behaviors to feeling as though it wasn't a big deal."

'Drives like he's drunk'
One teen boy quoted in the study said his dad "drives like he's drunk. His phone is just like sitting right in front of his face, and he puts his knees on the bottom of the steering wheel and tries to text."

Another boy, a middle-school student, was asked how often he is in "moving vehicle when the driver sends a text message." His answer? "All the time. My mom, sister or brother will sit behind the wheel the whole time and just text away."

One high-school student said "if" he texts when he drives, "I usually try to keep the phone up near the windshield, so if someone is braking in front of me or stops short, I'm not going to be looking down and hit them."

A more daring teen driver said he thinks "it's fine" to text and drive, and that he wears sunglasses while doing it "so the cops don't see" his eyes looking down at the phone screen. 

But another teen, who espouses a zero-tolerance texting policy, said he will "snatch the phone" out of drivers' hands if they text, telling them, "Don't be driving in the car with me and doing that. ... I want to live until the end of this car ride."

Increased attention, pressure
Pew's survey results come as increased public attention is being focused on the perils of texting and driving. Among the most notorious accidents tied to the two activities was a Los Angeles-area train crash last year involving a train engineer who was texting at the time of the collision. He was among the 25 people killed; at least 130 were injured.

Six months ago, Massachusetts officials banned nearly all mass-transit drivers in Boston from using or even carrying cell phones after a text-messaging trolley driver caused a crash that injured nearly 50 people.

One of the first definitive studies about texting and driving was released in August by the Transportation Institute at Virginia Tech, which said that the risk of an accident was four times greater for a driver typing out a text message than for a driver dialing a cell phone, and is more than 23 times greater than for a driver who wasn’t distracted by a phone at all.

Ban for federal workers
Federal transportation officials, who held a conference on distracted driving in September, said that 5,870 people were killed and 515,000 were injured last year in crashes where at least one form of driver distraction was reported. Driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008 and was more prevalent among young drivers, officials said.

President Barack Obama has since issued an executive order banning all federal workers from texting while driving on government business, driving government vehicles or using government equipment. And federal officials will attempt to ban text messaging by interstate bus drivers and truckers, and push states to pass their own laws against driving while distracted.

By January, 19 states and the District of Columbia will have enacted total bans on text messaging while driving. Some states ban it under some circumstances.

MORE FROM CELL PHONES

Cell phones Section Front

AT&T: Tighter control of cell data usage ahead 10 iPhone apps for the holidays that sparkle Think your kid isn't ‘sexting’? Think again GPS cell phone apps challenge standalone devices Using phone while walking perilous for seniors Smartphone return, exchange policies for the holidays A third of teens say they’ve texted while driving Review: Motorola's Cliq is a social butterfly Unspoken rules govern cell phone etiquette Evolution of the cell phone Cell phones Section Front   Add Cell phones headlines to your news reader: