Text messaging, a longstanding habit among many Asian and European mobile phone users, is finally catching on with Americans. A major survey commissioned by Cambridge, MA-based speech-to-text software company Vlingo shows that 55 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers send text messages—and 42 percent use their phones for texting as much as they do for calling. All of which is great news for handset manufacturers and cellular providers, who often charge by the message.
The bad news is that 28 percent of all survey respondents admitted to sending text messages while behind the wheels of their cars—which, let’s just be plain, is an incredibly stupid form of multitasking. Remember all those studies out of the University of Utah showing that talking on a mobile phone while driving reduces even a young person’s reaction time to that of a senior citizen? Texting is worse. Much worse.
And the practice is even more widespread among young people: 50 percent of teenagers surveyed in the Vlingo study and 52 percent of respondents aged 20 to 29 admitted to driving while texting, or “DWT.”
“To us, the message in the data is that we’ve got a problem now, but it’s going to get a lot worse as the younger generation comes up,” says Dave Grannan, Vlingo’s CEO. “It’s our belief that this is a serious public policy and safety issue that we need to address both with public policy and technology.”
We’ll get back to that “technology” part in a moment—since Vlingo does, of course, have an idea in mind about how software can reduce the danger from DWT. “Obviously there is some self-interest for us in putting out a report like this,” Grannan says. “The fact is that we’re a speech-to-text company, and we think there are hands-free solutions that can be developed.”
But in fairness, it should be said first that Vlingo didn’t set out to study the DWT issue specifically. It commissioned the independent research firm Common Knowledge Research Services to survey nearly 5,000 U.S. consumers from 48 states about their general text-messaging habits.
And in the process it discovered some interesting tidbits: almost 30 percent of respondents, for example, send more than 100 text messages per month, and 18 percent send more than 250. Almost 35 percent said that if they were unable to send text messages, it would have a negative impact on their lives. Among those who don’t text, the leading reasons were that it’s too expensive, that it takes too long, and that typing on a phone keyboard is a hassle.
It was when the researchers asked people about their texting behavior on the road, however, that things really got scary. Asked how often they drive and text simultaneously, 6 percent said they do it once a day, 8 percent said they do two to 10 times a day, and 1.5 percent said they do it more than 10 times a day. Among teenagers, 14 percent said they engage in DWT two to 10 times a day, and 8 percent said more than 10 times a day.
Texting from the road would be distracting enough if everyone had a Treo, a Blackberry, an iPhone, or some other device with a full QWERTY keyboard. But the survey found that 89 percent of respondents still have phones with standard 12-button keypads, which means they have to tap each key up to three times to get the letter they want. And if you’re watching your phone’s screen to see which letter you’re on, you’re probably not
