Slightly more than 20 per cent of the drivers in a recent study admit to accessing network sites on their telephones while driving. The most popular accesses are for e-mail, music, photos, Google maps, and Facebook. Nearly 40 per cent of surveyed drivers admit to allowing themselves to be sidetracked by e-mail, phone calls, text messages, and social network alerts while they drive.
Those texting while driving has jumped from just above 10 per cent to just above 30 per cent and those admittedly taking phone calls have gone from just below ten per cent to almost 30 per cent. All of this is attributed to a recent survey of more than 1100 British drivers.
Forty-five per cent of these drivers say that they look to find who sent them a text while they drive and more than half say that they take their eyes from the road in order to see who is calling. Drivers between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four are quite likely to look away from the road to check their cell phone, with nearly 60 per cent admitting they do.
Half of the motorists who get calls on their mobile while they are driving say that it does not distract them and around the same number claim texting is not a distraction either.
More than one quarter of the drivers said that it is okay to use their cell phones at a traffic signal and one third say using the phone at lay-bys is all right.
Experts and advocates say that these statistics are alarming.
