Almost all drivers think texting is bad, most do it anyway
Posted November 5, 2014 7:24 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – You’re on the freeway, traffic is getting congested and your cellphone’s text tone alerts you to an incoming message. Can you resist looking?
It turns out our words don’t match up with our actions when it comes to texting behind the wheel. A new poll finds 98 per cent of drivers think it’s dangerous, but three-quarters do it anyway!
Drivers list a lot of reasons for refusing to put down their phones while on the road, but the most popular excuse (43 per cent) in the AT&T survey was wanting to “stay connected” to friends, family and work.
Another 28 per cent of drivers are worried about missing something important if they don’t check right away.
About a quarter believe others expect them to respond to texts “right away” and 14 per cent admit they are “anxious” if they don’t.
More than a quarter of respondents fully believe their driving performance is not affected by texting.
AT&T collaborated on the survey with David Greenfield, founder of The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction and a professor at the University of Connecticut’s School of Medicine.
Greenfield, who studies the effects of digital technology on the brain, likes to call smartphones “the world’s smallest slot machines” because they affect the brain in similar ways that gambling or drugs can.
Dopamine levels increase as you anticipate messages, and that leads to higher levels of pleasure. Getting desirable messages can increase dopamine levels further.
While all distractions can be dangerous, much of the focus has been on texting and driving, Greenfield says, because “it’s ongoing and because there is an anticipatory aspect to it.”
Greenfield says people should not use their phone at all while driving, but acknowledges that might not be realistic.
Apps, public education and laws that ban texting and driving, he says, will all help change people’s behaviour, just as anti-drunken-driving laws and public education campaigns have reduced drunken driving over the past few decades.
