LOS ANGELES — Do you think it’s OK to text and drive because you’re a great driver? If so, chances are you’re a guy.
A new study published in the International Journal of Sustainable Strategic Management found that four out of five college students texted while driving, and that men in particular were more likely to downplay the dangers of distracted driving because they thought they were skilled drivers.
“While male respondents widely agree that texting while driving is dangerous, they also believe that they are better at texting while driving than other drivers,” study authors Garold Lantz and Sandra Loeb wrote.
The authors, who are both marketing professors at Kings College in Wilkes Barre, Pa., surveyed 120 male and female students on their texting habits, as well as their views of the practice.
The purpose of the study was to determine whether there was a connection between a person’s impulsiveness and their likelihood to text while driving. The authors were surprised by what they found.
On average, the students sent 82 text messages a day, with women sending more than that and men sending fewer on average. Women appeared to be more impulsive about texting, but that did not carry over to texting while driving, authors said.
“Females who were more impulsive were not more likely to text while driving,” they wrote. “This is probably due to the finding that females recognized the dangerousness of texting while driving more than males.”
Men, according to the study, reported texting less frequently, and less impulsively, but “showed less awareness (or less appreciation) of the dangerousness of texting while driving.”
Despite that difference in attitude, men and women appeared to be equally likely to text while driving in general, the authors wrote.
Previous studies have demonstrated that texting while driving slows reaction times even more than drinking and driving. Although most people think they are good at multitasking, other studies suggest less than 3 percent of the population can effectively perform more than one task at a time.
Despite state laws forbidding texting while driving and other forms of distracted driving, the authors wrote that legislation seems to have had minimal effect on people’s habits. The authors said further research was needed to implement effective programs that would discourage people from texting while driving.
