Do You Surf the Internet While Driving?

Posted 03/03/2011 at 9:35am | by Paul Lilly

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You were right to think that there's a lot of bad drivers out there. According to a State Farm survey, nearly one in five drivers (19 percent) admitted to surfing the Internet while sitting behind the wheel of an automobile, USA Today reports. These are people who drive at least once a week. In addition, 35 percent said they send or receive text messages while driving, too. The survey pinged 912 licensed drivers in November, but the proportion of dangerous drivers might be even higher.

"That 19 percent might be underestimating the actual use of smartphones to access the Internet while driving, because the majority of the respondents were in the age range of the 30s," says Cindy Garretson, director of auto technology research at State Farm. "The largest uses of cellphones tend to be the younger-age population. We would be very interested to know what that number would be if the focus was on the young adult market."

If it comes as any consolation, the majority of drivers say they only surf and text while stopped a traffic light or are otherwise stopped in traffic. Statistics show that isn't always the case. In 2009, nearly 5,500 people were killed and 448,000 injured in distracted driving crashes. Some 18 percent of the fatalities were the result of using a cellphone rather than paying attention to the road.