Drivers do most anything at wheel
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, January 23, 2007
A new insurance-company survey documents a few activities that are pretty evident on the road: 84 percent of American drivers admit that they speed, and 73 percent say they talk on cell phones while they drive.
The survey of 1,200 drivers by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. of Columbus, Ohio, also found 31 percent of drivers admitted to daydreaming while driving and 19 percent to fixing their hair or sending text messages.
Cell-phone use was highest among the youngest drivers and so was the tendency to eat on the road, with 73 percent of Generation Y-ers saying they ate snacks in the car.
Bill Windsor, associate vice president of safety at Nationwide, believes driver misbehavior is negating some of the gains from safer cars. “If it can be done in the kitchen, office, bathroom or bedroom, it shouldn’t be done in the car,” he said.
Drivers between 18 and 60 in the Nationwide study also admitted to changing clothes, balancing a checkbook, shaving, changing seats with passengers, reading a book, watching a movie, writing a grocery list, nursing a baby and putting in contact lenses – all behind the wheel. Thirty-eight percent admitted to having driven a certain distance without any recollection of doing so.
When Nationwide asked people what new equipment they’d like in their cars, 31 percent asked for a refrigerator, 29 percent wanted Internet access, 23 percent wanted a TV and 13 percent wanted a coffeemaker.
Federal auto-safety researchers say they believe 8 in 10 crashes and near-misses are caused by driver inattention. That’s based on a yearlong driver study in Washington, D.C., by the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. “It certainly surprised us,” said Rae Tyson, spokesman for the National Highway Transportation Administration, the sponsoring agency. “I don’t think anybody thought it was quite that high.”
