TeleNav, the makers of AT&T Navigator, Sprint Navigation, and other GPS navigation solutions, just released national survey data results about US drivers. The survey sample consisted of 502 US drivers, half male and half female. It is funny to see that men overhwhelmingly think they are better drivers, yet the results show that they have more speeding tickets in the past two years too. While 89% of both men and women think it should be illegal to text and drive, it turns out that 24% of them still do it at least once a week. They also collected data on driving guidance and road rage so check out the report for all the results.
Here in Washington State it is illegal to drive with a phone held up to your head and to text message while driving. I have heard of quite a few people receiving the $124 ticket for these offenses and hope that they stop texting and driving. I commute by train so am not in a car too much and can go without texting or Twittering on the road.
I have also heard reports of people getting tickets for scratching their head or resting their hand against their head since the police thought it was a phone. In one case, the woman had her son in the car and there was not even a phone in the car. She had her phone at home charging and was smart enough to have her neighbor come in with her when she arrived home to witness that the phone was on the charger. Unfortunately, she will have to go to court to get the ticket thrown out and it seems the law here in Washington needed more work on defining the details since there appears to be no way to prove a phone was in a person’s hand.
