Calif. safety enemy No. 1: cell phones

Cell phone use while driving has become the No. 1 safety problem on California roads and highways, a new survey of state motorists says.

Close behind came texting while driving. Combined, cell phoning and text messaging drew almost 40 percent of the responses.

Both problems individually outweighed last year’s main concern, “speeding and aggressive driving,” according to the second-annual survey by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Texting soared in mentions as the biggest danger, going from last year’s 2 percent to 18 percent.

When asked to name the most serious distraction for drivers, respondents said cell phone use (56 percent) and texting while driving (27 percent). No other distracted activity (eating, grooming, etc.) was cited in more than 2 percent of the responses. Texting again increased as a concern, going from about 13 percent (2010) to 27 percent. Cell phone use (handheld or hands-free) fell by 6 percent, with most of those mentions presumably rerouted to texting.

The 2011 survey included 1,801 drivers over age 18. They were questioned at gas stations throughout California. (Read the 2011 California traffic safety report).

“This information provides us with unique insight into the concerns of Californians,” OTS Director Christopher Murphy said. “It is very telling that we’ve seen such a shift in opinions on cell phone use in just one year.”

The drivers indicated they’re getting the message about distracted driving: When asked how often they talked on a handheld cell phone in the past month, 10.5 percent said “regularly” — down from 14 percent in 2010. The majority indicated “never.”

When asked the same question about text messaging while driving, 6 percent indicated they did it regularly, down from 9 percent in 2010. 72 percent said never. More drivers 18-24 cited texting as the top danger, yet they were more likely to text message while behind the wheel.

A third of Southern California drivers cited texting as the biggest problem while only a quarter agreed in Northern California.

More responses from the traffic safety survey:

• Four in 10 of the drivers said they used their cell phone less because of California’s handheld law.
• Seven in 10 said hands-free cell phone use was safer than handheld use.
• Six in 10 said they’ve been hit or almost hit by a driver yakking on a cell phone, up slightly from 2010.

The California Office of Traffic Safety survey also asked the motorists about drunken driving, sobriety checkpoints and seat belt use. The director said the survey was beginning to show trends in its second year and would provide “valuable data for our planning, particularly in distracted driving programs and the emerging drugged driving problem.”

Cell phone use by drivers ranked No. 2 in the 2010 survey about the biggest safety problems on California’s highways.

Related story: U.S. drivers recognize talking & texting as dangerous activities, but many continue to drive distracted anyway — even in high-risk traffic situations.

Despite the danger, we’re still talking

U.S. drivers recognize talking & texting as dangerous activities, but many continue to drive distracted anyway — even in high-risk traffic situations.

Nothing new there, but several recent surveys shed more light on the problem.

Results of five recent surveys regarding cell phone and texting use are consistent with attitudinal studies conducted over the past 10 years. The latest numbers strongly suggest that widespread distracted driving educational efforts still have a lot of work left to do.

A Roper poll of U.S. adults shows, in fact, that the higher the overall education level, the more likely a driver is to use a handheld cell phone or text message while behind the wheel.

The poll, sponsored by InsuranceQuotes.com, indicated 93 percent of all adults engage in some form of distracted driving.

About 40 percent said they crashed, received a ticket or exhibited dangerous driving behavior as a result. But when the sample size was limited to drivers with college degrees, the number increased to almost 50 percent.

When it comes to serious accidents, the well-educated drivers reported more than double the number of wrecks than all drivers. Similar but less dramatic increases were found among high-income drivers.

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A study of teenage drivers indicates that they continue to become more aware of of the dangers of text messaging while driving, with six of 10 agreeing that texting was the most dangerous distracted behavior.

But more than half of the young drivers admitted to texting while driving at least sometimes, according to the annual Liberty Mutual Insurance and SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) study.

“More than 40 percent of teens who text while driving send more than 10 messages from behind the wheel each day,” the survey of almost 2,300 young drivers said.

Almost 7 out of 10 teens said they talked on a cell phone while driving.

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67 percent of drivers surveyed by the AAA Foundation reported using a cell phone while driving in September, with one in three saying they frequently engaged in calls while behind the wheel.

More than a third of the drivers surveyed said they had text messaged while driving in the past month.

Of those admitting to talking and driving, “28% admitted to answering a call while driving on a freeway with heavy traffic more than half the time and 15% said they make calls on the freeway fairly often or regularly,” the Foundation reported.

More than half of those distracted drivers reported texting while stopped at red lights. And 16 percent admitted to reading text messages while driving in heavy freeway traffic.

Support for laws that ban texting while driving remains high, at 87 percent. About 70 percent of the 3,147 residents surveyed said they supported laws against handheld cell phone use while driving.

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Another pair of surveys found a staggering amount of texting by younger adults and tracked the Internet use of smartphone owners.

About 83 percent of 10 U.S. adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them use their devices for text messaging, a Pew Internet report on texting behaviors found.

To no one’s surprise, young adults (18-24) were the heaviest users. But get this: They send or receive an average of 109.5 messages on any given day. “That works out to more than 3,200 texts per month,” Pew reported. The survey group as a whole (2,277 adults) averaged 41.5 texts a day.

The texting report also said half of the people who do the most texting would rather communicate by text instead of by a phone call.

“Overall, the survey found that both text messaging and phone calling on cell phones have leveled off for the adult population as a whole,” Pew researchers said.

Another Pew report found that a third of U.S. adults own smartphones. People under 45 were among the groups most likely to say they own one, the survey found.

Some 87% of smartphone owners access the internet or email on their handheld, including two-thirds (68%) who do so on a typical day. When asked what device they normally use to access the internet, 25% of smartphone owners say that they mostly go online using their phone, rather than with a computer.

The texting survey was done in April and May, and the smartphone study was conducted in May.

In the dog days, a safety warning

Doggie distractions: AAA just updated its poll on pet owners who drive with their dogs in the vehicle. Once again, the survey found the pet owners fessing up to their potentially dangerous behaviors.

About 6 of 10 drivers who own dogs reported that they bring their canines along on car trips. About a quarter of the respondents said they use their hands or arms to restrain the dog while braking.

Almost 20 percent of the drivers said they reach into the back seat to interact with the dog, while 17 percent of the drivers allow their pets to sit their laps.

“83 percent of respondents acknowledge that an unrestrained dog in a moving car can be dangerous, but only 16 percent currently use a pet restraint,” the survey found.

The leading reason for not using a restraint was the owner felt the dog was calm and did not need restraining. AAA warned that in a crash, unrestrained dogs (calm or not) are flying objects, capable of doing great damage to themselves and to anyone in their way.

Education could be key. The AAA survey found that use of a restraint is three times greater with drivers who knew about cases in which unrestrained dogs were injured or caused injury to other passengers in a car crash (32 percent) compared with respondents who were not aware of such a situation but still used a restraint (9 percent).

The co-sponsor was Kuro, which (conveniently) sells pet-restraint services.

The online study was conducted using a sample of 1,000 dog owners who have driven with their dog in past year. A similar survey was released in 2010.

Canadians: Ban phones, save money

The distracted driving debate rarely comes down to money, but a Canadian study finds that a ban on cell phones can have economic benefits in addition to saving lives.

The University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine says its home province of Alberta could produce an annual savings of $36 million a year by instituting a cell phone ban.

The breakdown is $6 million in lower health care costs and $30 million in savings on clearing away wreckage from vehicle crashes. The lead researcher called the revenue proposition “a no-brainer” for the province.

But the costs of a ban on using cell phones while driving would be $20.5 million annually. This includes awareness campaigns, manpower and other costs of enforcement, and $14 million in calls (“lost consumer surplus”) that would not be made by drivers. The $14 million would not be direct costs, but revenue losses suffered by mobile telecommunications providers.

Economics are sometimes inserted into the debates on distracted driving legislation, with supporters pointing to the monetary gains from tickets and court costs. In California, for instance, a proposed doubling of fines for texting and handheld cell phone use could have brought the state another $32 million annually, a panel found. (The plan was defeated.)

Critics often accuse lawmakers who approve distracted driving bans of seeking revenue through traffic fines.

Alberta has been widely criticized for foot-dragging on distracted driving laws while six other provinces have enacted bans on text messaging and cell phones. (British Columbia, Newfoundland, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.)

The province government’s Bill 16, which would ban handheld cell phone use and texting, is up for debate in the Legislature. The bill seeks a $172 fine for various distracted driving activities.

Study author Dr. Alan Shiell (pictured) said he had mixed feels about Bill 16: “Personally, I would introduce a complete ban. It may inconvenience drivers a little but that is more than offset by the risk of a crash and the costs and harms associated with crashes.”

As for the study’s unusual economic angle, Shiell says: “I hope this research sheds some new light on the issue.”

The UC study assumed 4,450 fewer collisions annually in Alberta and 15 fewer deaths. It was first published in the September issue of the journal Health Economics.

Adults tie teens in texting, driving

Adults are just as likely to text message while driving as teenagers, according to a new national survey.

“Adults may be the ones sounding the alarm on the dangers of distracted driving, but they don’t always set the best example themselves,” said Mary Madden of the Pew Research Center.

The finding contradicts the widely held belief that texting and driving is primarily a problem with teens. The Pew report on distracted driving does show, however, that young adults (ages 18 to 34) are the most likely to text and drive, by far (59 percent).

More than a quarter of U.S. adults (27 percent) admit to texting while behind the wheel, Pew reports. Texting teens posted almost identical numbers (26 percent).

Police say texting and driving is more dangerous for teens, who have far less experience behind the wheel than adults. At any age, texting and operating a motor vehicle has been found to dramatically increase the chances of an accident.

Adults who say then have driven while on a cell phone clearly outpace teenagers, the distracted driving poll found. 61 percent of adults said they used a mobile phone while driving, vs. 43 percent of teenagers (ages 16, 17).

Nine in 10 members of Generation X (34-45 years old) who own cell phones report that they talk and drive. Seniors come in at 50 percent.

Adults 18-33 are the most likely to admit they text while driving (59 percent) compared with age groups 34-45 (50 percent) and 46-64 (29 percent).

More findings from the Pew study:

• Almost half of all adults and teens say they have been passengers in a vehicle when the driver was text messaging.
• 44 percent of adults say they’ve been in a vehicle when the driver used a cell phone in a dangerous way. 40 percent of the teens said they had. This figure decreases dramatically with age.
• Pew says 14 percent of adult drivers have run into something or someone while talking or texting.
• Men are more likely than women to admit texting while behind the wheel (51 percent of men who use text messaging devices vs. 42 percent of women).
• 82 percent of adults have cell phones. 58% text message on their mobile phones.

Telephone interviews were conducted with 2,252 adult drivers in late May and early April. Numbers for teens came from earlier reports. Adults may be more reliable than teens in self-reporting their behaviors.

Another recent report found that states are increasingly fighting distracted driving.

Forty-three states are now collecting data on distraction as a factor in road and highway accidents. That compares with 17 in 2003, the Governors Highway Safety Association reports.

Twenty-seven states have written distracted driving provisions into their Strategic Highway Safety Plans. (That’s almost the same number of states that had adopted laws on texting and talking while behind the wheel.) The SHSPs reflect priorities and programs in departments of transportation and motor vehicles, as well as safety programs.

Thirty-seven states have launched public information campaigns to warn of the hazards of distracted driving.