Nearly half of you text and drive

Capetonians who mix cell phones and driving could soon end up cut off from the world. No word on whether makeup or other items could be confiscated too.

Capetonians who mix cell phones and driving could soon end up cut off from the world. No word on whether makeup or other items could be confiscated too.

Published Jun 13, 2012

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There's truly a multitude of things that can cause you to lose concentration behind the wheel, with potentially fatal consequences.

The one that seems to be under the spotlight the most, however, is texting on your cell phone while driving and in the past few months there has been numerous surveys pointing out the dangers of this and how rampant it is.

We decided to get the local picture by using our reader poll function to ask you whether or not you text behind the wheel and it turns out that almost half of the 3191 respondents (46.4 percent) actually have done so at some point.

DO YOU TEXT WHILE DRIVING?

Yes, often - 15.7%

Sometimes - 30.7%

No, never - 53.6%

This in spite of research findings by world-leading road-safety institutions that sending SMS's (texting) while driving is more dangerous than driving while drunk or stoned on cannabis.

The UK government's Transport Research Laboratory found that:

Using a smartphone for social networking slowed the drivers' reaction times by an average of 37.6 percent.

Texting slowed the drivers' reaction times by an average of 37.4 percent.

Conversation using a hands-free kit slowed the drivers' reaction times by an average of 26.5 percent.

Cannabis slowed the drivers' reaction times by an average of 21 percent.

Alcohol at the legal limit slowed the drivers' reaction times by an average of 12.5 percent.

Get the message?

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