Everybody knows texting while driving is dangerous, but many people seem to do it anyway. Photo: blackeycove/Flickr

By Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica

Look around on an average day, and distracted driving—especially as it relates to cell phone use and texting while driving—might seem to be more common than ever. In reality, however, the frequency of drivers using cell phones or texting may be declining, according to a 50-page report put together by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA). Despite this, people using gadgets while driving remains a safety concern—especially when it comes to texting.

Despite the near universal agreement that distracted driving is a Bad Thing, GHSA Executive Director Barbara Harsha pointed out that many research papers on the topic are incomplete or contradictory. Because of this, the GHSA examined more than 350 research papers on the topic in order to put together its report in an attempt to consolidate the available info and to find trends, though Harsha noted that further studies are still needed to fully understand the scope of the problem.

If there is a problem, that is. The GHSA report cites the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) annual cell phone and texting survey wherein some 50,000 vehicles are stopped at a representative sample of 1,500 intersections in the US. In 2008, six percent of vehicles had a driver who was engaging in hand-held phone use (that is, holding the device in some way while talking) and one percent were observed to be texting. Those numbers went down by “a statistically significant amount” in 2009 to five percent and 0.6 percent, respectively.

It’s hard not to be skeptical of those numbers, though, and the GHSA report does include other self-reported statistics that indicate that the behaviors could be much more common. For example, 30 percent of 1,947 North Carolina teen drivers revealed in a 2010 survey that they texted the last time they drove, while only two percent of Kansas drivers between 18-30 said that they had never texted while driving. Unsurprisingly, younger drivers were more likely to text and drive than older drivers, though such a trend could also be partly due to the fact that younger cell phone users are more likely to text people in any scenario.

The report also cites a 2006 study showing that nearly 80 percent of all crashes involved a driver looking away from the roadway just prior to an incident, though the GHSA admits that most crashes were “very minor.” Data from several other studies led the GHSA to conclude that drivers were distracted in 15 to 30 percent of allcrashes (minor to fatal), though it remains unclear whether the distraction itself was a contributing factor. A statistic from the NHTSA said that 16 percent of fatal crashes in 2009 involved at least one distracted driver.

Although some drivers attempted to compensate for their distractedness by slowing down or increasing distance between them and the vehicle just ahead, others did not. A 2008 study showed that most drivers in an experimental setting were not actually aware of how much their cell phone use affected their driving skills. Additionally, handheld and hands-free conversations appeared to have the same general effects, though texting while driving was shown in a separate 2009 study to increase the risk of “safety-critical events” to more than 23 times the normal level while driving.

“No other distraction has even this much evidence for its effect on crash risk,” wrote the GHSA.

The GHSA has long advocated for texting-while-driving bans in addition to other distracted driving restrictions, and that remains one of the group’s main recommendations in the latest report. The organization also advocates a complete cell phone ban for novice drivers—a restriction that is already in place in 30 states plus Washington, DC. (sorry teens!). When combined with rumble strips to alert drivers when they’re drifting and better recording of distracted driving instances, the GHSA believes states could see “dramatic declines” in these behaviors.

Whether that’s actually true remains up for debate; a 2010 study conducted by the Highway Loss Data Institute revealed that texting-while-driving legislation apparently did little to change accident rates, with some states even showing slight increases in accidents after the bans went into place. (The authors theorized that drivers might be making more of an attempt to hide their cell phones while texting and driving after the bans, impairing their driving even further.)

Other studies indicate that there may be strong regional effects buried within these trends, though, so perhaps it’s wise to prioritize education about the risks so that everyone on the road can live to text another day.