Risks of Texting and Driving for Middle Age Drivers

Teen and young adult drivers are often the targets of public service campaigns aimed at reducing the number of car accidents caused by the dangerous combination of texting and driving. Despite the common perception that teen drivers are the most at risk group for distracted driving car accidents caused by texting while driving, a new study reveals that texting and driving may be more problematic for middle age drivers.
According to a study conducted at the Wayne State University and published in the January 2015 issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention, middle age drivers who text while driving fared much worse in a series of systematic computerized road tests which examined the effect of texting and driving on fifty drivers of varying ages. While 25% of younger drivers would veer onto oncoming traffic or onto the road shoulder while texting and driving, a stunning 100% of drivers between the ages of 45 to 59 did the same. Poor texting skills (which require the driver to use two hands to send a text) and difficulty with multitasking in middle age drivers may account for this large discrepancy.

Researchers emphasized that texting and driving remains an extremely dangerous activity for drivers of any age. This type of distracted driving causes all drivers to lose focus on the road and often leads to serious and fatal car collisions. Some of the significant and potentially dangerous risks associated with texting and driving can include drifting into other lanes of traffic (including oncoming traffic), veering onto the shoulder of a road or off the road entirely, rear end collisions, speeding accidents, multi-vehicle car accidents and car accidents involving pedestrians.