Statistics Regarding Texting While Driving

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Statistics Regarding Texting While Driving

Written by Malman Law, reviewed by Steve J. Malman.

Distracted driving, and more specifically texting, has become a hot issue. With plenty of serious car accidents and deaths being caused by drivers who were texting at the time of collision, it’s not something that should be taken lightly. In a recent documentary, Werner Herzog shed light on the different toll that texting takes on the people who are involved in the accidents, including the texting drivers themselves. Auto accident lawyers take on cases involving these types of accidents all the time nowadays, so it seems appropriate to list off some important statistics regarding texting while driving in order to stress the importance of safe driving.

Increased Risk of Crashing

When people text while driving, a crash is up to 23 times more likely to occur. The average time spent texting is five seconds (sometimes more, sometimes less, obviously), which, if you’re on the highway, equates to driving roughly the length of a football field without looking up at all. Scarily, 77% of young adults are reported as feeling “very or somewhat confident” that they can safely text while driving, however, correlating statistics show that teens who text while they’re behind the wheel spend approximately 10% of the time driving outside of their lane.  In 2011, reports showed that at least 23% of all crashes—1.3 million accidents—involved cell phones. If that’s not hard enough evidence that texting while driving is dangerous, what will convince drivers? Auto accident lawyers have dealt with many cases involving injuries, permanent bodily harm, and death resulting from cell phone-caused accidents, and will confirm the dangers of using your phone while behind the wheel.

Learned Behavior

Lest you think that it’s just teens who are texting while driving, it might be learned behavior—48% of kids aged 12-17 have been in a car while the driver was texting, and 15% of young drivers have seen their own parents text while driving. More than a quarter of all adults have also admitted to sending and receiving texts while driving, so it’s absolutely not just new or young drivers that are doing this. Though 39 states have banned texting while driving, the laws are difficult to enforce as many drivers have taught themselves discreet ways to text while behind the wheel—ways that take their eyes off the road for even longer, as they look down at a screen and type without holding the phone up like they may have done in the past. Neither method of texting while driving is safe—make no mistake. Drivers should focus on driving. texting can wait. You don’t want to have to call up an auto accident lawyer for help after crashing into someone.