Texting and Driving - Teenager Perspective

State Farm Insurance issued a press release on September 20 regarding a survey of nearly 700 teenagers. The survey reviewed the teens' perspectives on the hazards of texting while driving, and the relative hazards of texting versus drinking while driving.

In a 14 to 17 year old age group, 36 percent of the teens strongly agreed that if they texted regularly while driving they could one day be killed. In the same group, 55 percent felt they could suffer a fatal accident some day if drinking and driving.

Teens who have never texted while driving showed over a 20 percent higher agreement that texting could cause an accident than for teens who admitted they were already texting while driving.

It appears many teens still believe there is less negative consequence to picking up a cell phone while driving versus drinking. Let me state that the use of cell phones while driving in the US is not just a teen issue, it is a pandemic which most of us have been guilty of at one time or another. It takes a conscious decision to leave the cell phone in your pocket or on the seat when it rings or you feel you need to call someone.

Take a minute and review your driving habits. If you find you spend a lot of time fiddling with your phone, your GPS, your lunch or your makeup, make yourself a pledge to stop doing all that and concentrate on driving. We may all save some lives each year if we get back to the task of driving and not treating our cars as our living rooms.