Teenagers do understand the dangers of using cellphones while driving —but they still use them, new research has found.
Car crashes kill more teens each year than anything else, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Teenagers think about what they do behind the wheel in very different ways than we think about teenagers behind the wheel,” said Marilyn Sommers, professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing.
For the study, the researchers got 30 teenagers engaged in conversations on distracted driving.“The definition of ‘texting while driving’ is not the same for everyone,” Catherine McDonald, assistant professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing, said. “For example, in their responses the teenagers would indicate that they did not text and drive, but then later would say something like, ‘At a red light, I’ll check my phone’,” McDonald noted.
The interviewees made a distinction the interviewers had not. The study appeared in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.