Adults Text While Driving More Than Teens, Says Survey

It’s often been assumed that teens are one of the main culprits in the texting-while-driving epidemic in the U.S. It makes sense — teens are new drivers, and thus more reckless, and they also happen to be expert texters.

However, a new study funded by AT&T finds that adults actually text while driving more than kids. The study was taken from a pool of 1,011 consumers.

According to the survey, nearly half of all adults text while driving, whereas slightly fewer (43 percent) of teens admit to texting while driving. Perhaps worse, 98 percent adults who text while driving admit that they know it’s wrong but they do it anyways.

The survey was put together as part of AT&T’s It Can Wait campaign. If you’ve bought a phone from AT&T in the last year or watched any television, you know what I’m talking about. The It Can Wait campaign shows heartbreaking stories of young adults and teens who’ve become disabled or lost a loved one due to texting while driving.

According to the National Safety Council, the number of adult drivers (180 million far outweighs the number of teen drivers (around 10 million). And the Center for Disease Control says that there are an average of nine people killed in texting-related accidents each day, with 1,060 injured in texting-related crashes.

Since texting occupies your eyes, hands, and mind, it’s considered one of the most dangerous distractions on the road, and elevates the risk of a crash to 23 times worse than driving while not distracted.

Texting is the issue at hand now, but as technology continues to evolve there will be even greater distractions at the wheel. Google Glass comes to mind, though we’ve already seen action taken in some states to prevent Glass-related accidents.