Teens Texting While Driving: Here's Where Alabama Ranks

We’ve all experienced it — you’re driving the speed limit and nearly zoom into the back of another car that’s traveling 10 mph slower and ping-ponging between the lane boundaries. Maybe the driver simply lost focus and will self-correct, you think. Wrong. You’re met with brake lights even though no one and nothing is around. You speed around the driver and stare daggers through their window. But the teenager, buried in a phone, doesn’t look up.

Sound familiar? It should. A new study published Monday in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that nearly four in 10 high school students — 38 percent — text while driving. In Alabama, where the minimum learner’s permit age is 15, that number is worse at 43 percent. That number ranged from a low of 26 percent (Maryland) to a high of 64 percent (South Dakota). In Maryland, you have to be 15 years and 9 months old to get a learner’s permit. In South Dakota, you have to be 14.

The researchers analyzed data from the 35 states that gave out the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. More than 100,000 students who were at least 14 years old and had driven in the last month took the survey. The actual numbers could be even higher, as teens have been known to stretch the truth.The authors said the prevalence of teens texting while driving varied by more than two-fold across states. The dangerous activity was higher in states that had lower minimum learner's permit ages as well as in states where a larger percentage of students drove.

Here are the states where the most teens text while driving:

1. South Dakota, 64 percent
2. North Dakota, 58 percent
3. Montana, 55 percent
4. Wyoming, 52 percent
5. Nebraska, 50 percent
6. Idaho, 49 percent
7. Missouri, 47 percent
8. Rhode Island, 45 percent
9. New Hampshire, Indiana and Oklahoma, 44 percent

The researchers said the likelihood of teens texting and driving increased “substantially with age” and white students were more likely to do it than their peers of all other races and ethnicities. Kids who don’t regularly use seatbelts were 21 percent more likely to text while driving, and students who said they drink and drive were nearly twice as likely.

“Older age, white race/ethnicity, and other risky driving behaviors were associated with TWD,” the authors found, referring to texting while driving.

In 2015, cellphone use was linked to 14 percent of deadly crashes in which distracted driving was a factor. Using a cellphone is believed to increase crash risk by 2–9 times, the authors wrote.

“Texting while driving (TWD) may be especially risky because it involves at least three types of driver distraction: visual, physical, and cognitive,” the study said.

Most states have tried to curb the pervasive problem through various laws. As of April 2018, 38 states and the District of Columbia had enacted laws restricting all cellphone use while driving for new drivers. Texting while driving is outright banned for all drivers in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

But how effective those laws are remains unclear at best, the study noted. Enforcement is a major undertaking and a recent literature review found that they appeared to have no long-term effect on preventing new drivers from using cellphones.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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