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Distracted driving is a serious epidemic on the road with over 3,000 people killed each year and nearly 400,000 injured. A recent Consumer Reports National Research Center survey found widespread use of cell phones behind the wheel. Despite most people saying it's dangerous, they continue dialing and driving.
To better understand driving behavior with cell phones, we interviewed 1,003 adults in a nationally representative survey.
Learn how to stay safe behind the wheel in our guide to distracted driving.
This is what people told us they saw in the previous 30 days:
- 91 percent saw a driver talking on a handheld phone.
- 62 percent saw a driver texting.
- 22 percent saw a driver using hands to operate a smart-phone app.
We also asked drivers to reveal their own behaviors behind the wheel in the past 30 days:
- 43 percent had a conversation on a handheld phone.
- 33 percent of smart-phone owners used their hands to operate an app.
- 18 percent of smart-phone owners accessed e-mail or social media.
- 14 percent texted.
Despite their use of phones while driving, 91 percent of respondents confessed that texting is very dangerous and 51 percent said using a handheld cell phone is very dangerous.
See the full results of our latest distracted driving survey and learn what's being done to combat the problem in our report "Dangers in the next lane."
For more on distracted driving, see our special section.
