Texting while driving is illegal in 49 out of 50 states because it takes both your eyes off the road and takes at least one of your hands from the controls, making for an incredibly dangerous situation (Montana doesn’t have a law banning it, if you’re curious). I’ve only attempted texting while driving a few times in my life, and it felt sketchy enough for me to swear off the practice for good.
Banging out texts to the group chat at the speed limit is one thing—at least you’re only breaking one law. But some people even text and drive while they’re breaking the speed limit, which feels like an even more potent recipe for disaster. According to a new study released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), there is a correlation between speeding and cell phone use. And it’s not the good kind.
The study, which used data from insurance companies’ safe-driving apps on driver phones to collect data, found that drivers are actually more likely to use their phones while speeding. According to the IIHS, this flips the commonly held notion that drivers usually only use their phones at slower speeds, and highlights how frequently people might be combining two dangerous driving activities.
The Results Paint A Scary Picture
In the nationwide study, the IIHS found that as people increased their speed over the speed limit, their cellphone usage also increased. The correlation shifts greatly depending on what type of road the user was on. For example, on highways and other limited-access roads, where you need to enter via a dedicated on-ramp, the share of driving time handling a phone rose by 12% for every 5 mph drivers went over the limit. But on roads where you have to be more actively involved in driving, that percentage dropped. From the IIHS’s release:
On other roads, such as arterials and routes that connect towns, every 5 mph over the local limit was linked to a smaller 3% increase in phone handling. These roads often have traffic lights, intersections, roundabouts and stop signs that require drivers to take action periodically, even when traffic is flowing.
You’d think that as speed limits grow, people would be more attentive behind the wheel, since stuff is going by faster and incidents can occur in the blink of an eye. But according to the data, the opposite is happening. Scarily, the IIHS found that phone usage actually goes up as the speed limits increase. From the report:
The increases were larger on roads with higher posted limits. On limited-access roads with 70 mph limits, for example, for every 5 mph a vehicle exceeded the limit there was a 9% larger increase in phone handling than on similar roads with 55 mph limits.
A similar pattern showed up on roads with more access than freeways. Compared with roads posted at 25 or 30 mph, there was a 3% larger increase in phone handling for every 5 mph drivers exceeded the limit on 45 or 50 mph roads and a 7% larger increase on 55 mph roads.
Why are people mixing and matching these two law-breaking activities? The IIHS has several theories. The simplest is that drivers who take more risks—a.k.a., those who more often use their phone behind the wheel or speed regularly—are more likely to risk doing those things at the same time. Another factor, according to the organization, is related to stress. It references research that shows phone use and speeding spike (separately, independent of each other) during rush hour and school drop-off times.
The IIHS says that it could also be as simple as drivers responding to road cues like lighter traffic, fewer pedestrians, and long gaps between traffic devices like stop signs and stoplights, where you actually have to be an active participant in driving. It sort of makes sense—when you’re cruising down an open, high-speed highway with no traffic and tons of visibility, you might feel more comfortable grabbing your phone to send off a quick text, even if you’re already going 10 mph over the limit.
How They Got The Data
Depending on how you feel about data tracking and big corporations watching your every move, the methodology for getting this level of data will be either deeply fascinating or deeply unsettling. The IIHS analyzed nearly 600,000 trips across the United States between July and October 2024, excluding Alaska, California, Hawaii, and New York. Such a large sample size wouldn’t have been possible if not for the immense amount of tracking data that can now be extracted from each user’s phone, thanks to telemetry-monitoring apps tied to insurance. From the report:
More nuanced information about driver behavior has recently become available with the proliferation of safe-driving apps. These apps, which promise cost savings for drivers who enroll, let insurers adjust premiums based on how each person drives. Using a smartphone’s GPS and other sensors, the apps track speed and location, time of day, events like hard braking and rapid acceleration, and phone use. With large amounts of aggregated data, researchers can now measure phone use much more comprehensively than before.
The study included only trips that lasted longer than 18 minutes and involved at least two minutes on an interstate. The data, supplied to the IIHS by Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), also excluded any driving time spent more than 5 mph under the speed limit, to eliminate data produced from heavy traffic.
If you’re wondering exactly how the study determined a driver was handling their phone while driving, the IIHS provides a pretty detailed explanation that makes me scared to even touch my phone while I’m in my car:
Drivers were counted as handling their phones when the phone’s internal gyroscope detected a significant rotation while the screen was unlocked. The phone-handling rate was calculated as total phone-handling time divided by total driving time. To identify speeding, CMT matched each trip’s GPS location to a speed-limit database. The IIHS researchers then used statistical methods to estimate phone-handling rates for limited-access roads and other thoroughfares, across different posted limits and with different levels of speeding (for example, 5-10 mph over a 60-65 mph limit on a limited-access road).
Bad driver or not, it’s a reminder that no, you’re not crazy, and yes, your phone is monitoring your every move at all times.
What Can Be Done?
While those monitoring apps mentioned above incentivize safer driving by offering lower premiums to people who go the speed limit and don’t touch their phone while behind the wheel, the results from this study prove they can’t ever really fully eliminate the problem.
Police are already on the lookout for speeders and cell phone users, but most of the time, those two types of enforcement happen separately. The IIHS suggests the best way to approach this is to develop safety cameras that monitor for both speed and cellphone use at the same time. Road cameras designed to catch phone users in the act have been used overseas, in places like China, for years now.
Another idea the IIHS doesn’t mention in its news piece on the study, but does mention in the study abstract, is to make roads seem more convoluted to keep drivers’ attention:
Countermeasures that raise perceived roadway complexity may also reduce the likelihood of both phone manipulation and speeding.
How exactly road builders would go about making highways more complex isn’t clear. Maybe a bollard that pops up from the ground once in a while, at a random time in the day? Or a stoplight that turns red every 45.6 minutes? Maybe highway workers can simply start occasionally releasing robot dogs into the road that drivers need to avoid. That would certainly get me off my phone and lock into the act of driving. If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
Ah, so that’s why so many people want to register their supercars in Montana. They can avoid taxes AND penalties for doing stupid shit.
/s
There’s a similar article on the old site, and I replied there, but I’ll post something similar here.
Vehicles have sensors to determine passengers location. Phones have sensors / GPS to determine if they’re moving more than 5 mph.
If a vehicle senses a phone, and there is only one occupant in that vehicle, then the phone and vehicle communicate to each other and the phone is unusable for actions that would distract the driver while the vehicle was in motion. Obviously, 911 calls would still be available.
If a passenger was detected, then they could look at their phone if they felt they needed to, but using those same gyroscopes mentioned in this article, if the phone was given to the driver, the screen would change to “Pay attention to driving!” or something like that.
Our 2024 Chevrolet Trax disables many of the infotainment-screen functions while the vehicle is in motion. Once the driver pulls over and stops, the greyed-out functions become available again.
Phones could be set up to do the same thing.
People who say they drive just fine while using their phone are the 2020s version of “I drive better after I’ve been drinking”
I like to text when I drive. When I hit send, I speed up as fast I can to try and get to the recipient before my text. So far, no joy, but I’m getting close, I can just feel it.
I know someone who was pulled over for speeding and mouthed off to the cop. The cop came back with a speeding ticket and a cell phone ticket. He didn’t even have a phone with him.
Lesson – don’t mouth off to cops. Nothing good can ever come from being anything but scrupulously polite. You might even just get a warning.
There is a time and a place to argue your innocence if you feel you have been wronged, but the side of the road is not that time and not that place.
He’s lucky he didn’t get a seatbelt ticket tossed on there too. And equipment violations, and anything else a pissed-off cop can come up with.
Seeing a car weaving out of it’s lane near me and realizing the driver is not paying attention because they need to look at their phone pisses me off as much as a drunk driver. They are putting themselves and everyone around them at risk. It’s a selfish and disgusting habit. Nothing on your phone is that important that you can’t wait until you pull off the road to look at it.
Either use your car’s hands-free or don’t use your phone at all while your driving. Wait until you’re sitting on the toilet to text and scroll like a normal person.
What if your car also has a toilet built into the seat?
Let me stop you right there. NO, it’s not “one thing”. We need to set a hard line here, don’t do anything to make it ever sound okay.
more than just texting, also scrolling reels on social media, choosing the next song, filming a tiktok, ect.
I do not text and drive. I don’t even like phone calls on the hands-free setup. I’ll pull over rather than carry on a conversation. When I go fast I’m very much paying attention to the road and other drivers because I know there’s some in there who are not actually driving and are just sitting the the seat with their brain tuned out.
I used to notice many people texting away while waiting at red lights or stop signs, primarily in the early morning on the way to work. Both men and women, in their late 20’s to early 40’s, dressed like on the way to the office or some such professional work place. Seeing as they just left home I wondered why texting away in the vehicle, decided they were all adulterers and could only text their lovers in the time space between being at home with family and then being in the office. For me, being in my vehicle is my quiet time, do not want to be bothered by anyone.
They are speeding because they are late, while texting that they are only five minutes away.
Are drivers using the phone more because they are speeding or the opposite? Or do they speed more when on the phone because they are distracted and not paying attention to their speed?
I think they might have this causation backwards.
I was super confused as well. The headline and a lot of the article does a terrible job at explaining what the study found and what it means. This was the only part that cleared it up for me:
“The IIHS has several theories. The simplest is that drivers who take more risks—a.k.a., those who more often use their phone behind the wheel or speed regularly—are more likely to risk doing those things at the same time.”
That makes sense. If you’re a bad driver, you’re speeding. And you’re using your phone. Therefore, those two activities will go together more often than texting happening without speeding.
The headline absolutely makes it sound like speeding is a cause of texting. Nope. They are independent events that have a correlation, that’s it. It seems like a big “duh” is the appropriate response here.
It’s the same as distracting touch screens on the dash trying to change a setting. For me texting T9 word with my Razr phone 20 years ago was even harder.
Texting T9 on my old Nokia was way easier than texting now. With the raised keys, I could feel the buttons and type without looking. Now, that’s not possible.
One way to lower texting while driving, speeding, really any and all traffic violations is to reduce driving altogether. The best way to do that while also improving the quality of life for millions, reducing wear on roads, saving billions of barrels of gas is to make WFH absolutely mandatory for all jobs that don’t have a damned good, PROVABLE need for that work to be done in an office more than 1-2 days a week.
Since I do not trust companies to be truthful whatsoever about that need I think financial incentives for WFH to be paid by higher property and sales taxes on office space will go a long way to encourage compliance.
Yikes
Why?
Forcing people to stay home because the government knows best is some insane commie shit. For the good of us all, you should never have power over anything
I’m amazed so many “car enthusiasts” are so rabidly anti-car. Fucking disgusting.
Cars ARE awful in a TON of ways. Guess im disgusting while acknowledging that while still liking cars.
A WFH mandate doesn’t mean 24/7 employee house arrest, jesus.
But then again I can see Amazon trying to pull that so
Is it really so different from forcing people to leave home so they don’t suffer the litany of abuses being broke offers?
Anti-car and anti-commute are not even close to the same thing.
My commute will not be enjoyable in any car.
Sometimes you might, you know want to see other humans? Or maybe you like working at the office? Or having face to face meetings actually improve outcomes?
I use public transport to go to the office anyway.
Then make it available and hybrid folks can find each other, ez (okay I know not “ez” but easier)
I’m all for WFH (I’ve done it for the last five years), but at the same time there are tons of people who want to work in an office and find value in it, even if it’s not a “damned good, PROVABLE need” as you say.
This rant was a fun tangent I guess, though? People text too much while driving, so therefore the government should mandate people work from home. Ok!
I see it as mandating the option of 100% (or a higher percentage) WFH availability.
Laws affecting company policy, not an employee. There’s not enough RTO proponents in the rank and file to result in all these three-five days a week in office requirements.
A top down pressure to enable WFH is hard. There’s so much gray area in the reasons for RTO versus WFH. The battle is already ongoing between employers and employees. It needs to be bottom up (employee) pressure.
It will only gain acceptance if it’s an ADDITIONAL option, rather than a forced action.
I get irrationally angry when I see someone in a relatively new car (within the last 5 years) on their phone while driving. Put it down and use the onboard system.
The one thing has ticked me off with android for me is google started using AI to summarized messages if you are sent a few messages at a time and it always misses a lot of info. Like no google I do not want my messages summarized just read me the full messages I was sent.
Wait, AI is just being pumped into everything without actual use-case or need? Shocker.
Same, it’s absolutely baffling to me. All I have to do is hit the voice assistant button on my steering wheel and tell Siri exactly who I want to call or text, and it does it. The worst case is I have to use the click-wheel in my CX-30 to go to texts and pick the one to read out. And that’s why I love the click wheel, I have it down to muscle memory to toggle over to texts, and then it’s a 0.2 second glance to find the one to read. In what world is picking up your phone better than this?
I don’t bother with my phone while driving, but you’ll never find me using any of the voice interactions with my car. I don’t talk to my car, it’s a car. I’m also not interested in my car talking to me.
Sometimes data privacy matters.
Exactly. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I can figure out speech to text and bluetooth while in the car.
Carplay is a pretty poor interface and locks out a lot of features in apps.
For example changing to a different saved podcast in Apple Podcast
I feel like this sort of thing is obvious enough to not need a study. If you’re speeding, you’re probably late. If you’re late, you’re probably contacting someone to tell them.
There must be a LOT of chronically late people on my commute.
This is why I try to get up and out earlier. Around 7 am dumber things start happening on the highway.
Why not call then?
If you’re not smart enough to leave a bit earlier, you’re probably not smart enough to do that