Ironic: Study says distracted drivers more likely to be well-educated

Filed under: Safety

Now matter how you slice it - and no matter how many of us admit to doing it - distracted driving is pretty dumb. At first blush, then, it seems odd that a new poll commissioned by InsuranceQuotes.com indicates that well-educated and well-to-do American drivers are the most likely culprits of distracted driving.

When you consider that drivers in higher income brackets are more likely to have electronic gadgetry inside their cars with them at any given time, you begin to understand why drivers with a college degree that make more than $75,000 per year are the highest offenders of talking on cell phones or texting while driving. Or worse.

Not that the picture is particularly rosy for the rest of the class... a full 93 percent of responders admit to driving while distracted, regardless of age or class, and 40 percent report that their habits have gotten them into trouble, be that by being cited with a ticket, getting into a near-miss or even a full-blown accident. Indeed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2009 were attributable to distracted driving, and we'd only expect that figure to get worse as more distracting devices hit the market. Hit the jump for the full press release.

[Source: InsuranceQuotes.com | Image: Corbis]

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Ironic: Study says distracted drivers more likely to be well-educated originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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