The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety released its fifth annual "Traffic Safety Culture Index" this month and the messages related to distracted driving due to mobile device use are clear:
- Nearly all drivers (95.7%) say that drivers text messaging or emailing are a very serious threat to their personal safety
- 94.5 percent say that they personally consider it unacceptable for a driver to type a text or email while driving
- 79.8 percent believe that most other people where they live consider it unacceptable to text while driving
However, contrasted against this near-universal belief that texting or emailing while driving is extremely dangerous:
- More than 1 in four (26.6%) say that they have typed or sent a text message or email in the past 30 days while driving
- More than 1 in three (34.7%) say they have read a text message or email while driving during this time
This "do as I say, not as I do" paradigm is one of the reasons that the problem of distracted driving is difficult to solve through education and law enforcement alone. The statistics prove that, although people understand the dangers and face penalties, they continue the behaviours.
At Aegis, we share the objectives of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety to value and pursue traffic safety. We are committed to helping reduce the estimated 8,000 deaths on American highways in 2011 due to mobile device use.