Adults As Likely As Teens To Text While Driving
A new survey released Friday finds that U.S. adults are just as likely as teens to have sent or read text messages while driving, and are significantly more likely than teenagers to have talked on their cellphones while behind the wheel.
The survey, conducted by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, found that 47% of all texting adults say they have sent or read a text message while driving; compared with 34% of texting teens aged 16-17.
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In the general population, this means that 27% of adults have sent or read text messages while driving, compared with 26% of teens.
The survey also found that adults were more likely than teens to talk on their mobile phones while driving, with 75% of cellphone-owning adults saying they talked on their mobile phones while behind the wheel, compared with just 52% of cellphone-owning teens.
Among the entire U.S. population, that translates into 61% of adults having talked on a cell phone while driving, compared with 43% of all teens.
"This data suggests that adults are now just as likely to engage in this risky behavior," said Mary Madden, co-author of the report.
"Adults may be the ones sounding the alarm on the dangers of distracted driving, but they don’t always set the best example themselves,” she said.
Forty-nine percent of the adults reported having been passengers in a car where the driver was sending or reading text messages, the survey found.
"It is just as hard for adults as it is for teenagers to resist chatting with friends and sending off that quick text even in the midst of heavy traffic," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and a co-author of the report.
"Constant mobile connectivity to friends, family and colleagues is a hallmark of age and it is hard to resist even in situations where it would seem smart to stay focused on the task at hand.”
Beyond driving, the survey found that 14 percent of U.S. adults reported becoming so distracted while talking or texting on their mobile phone that they have physically ran into another person or object
The Pew survey of 2,252 adults was conducted in April and May of this year, and has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. The findings for teens are based on previously released data from a separate nationwide phone survey conducted by Princeton Survey Research International between June 26 and September 24, 2009, which included a sample of 800 teens ages 12-17 and a parent or guardian with a margin of error of four percentage points.
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