Associated Press

ATLANTA—More than half of high school seniors admitted in a government survey that they had sent a text message while behind the wheel, a finding that comes amid a renewed federal crackdown on distracted driving.
"We need to teach kids, who are the most vulnerable drivers, that texting and driving don't mix," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday at a Washington news conference to announce pilot projects in Delaware and California to discourage distracted driving.
In the survey, about 58 percent of high school seniors said they had texted or emailed while driving during the previous month. About 43 percent of high school juniors said they had done so.
"I'm not surprised at all," said Vicki Rimasse, a New Jersey woman who said her son had caused a fender bender earlier this year after texting in traffic. She made him take a safe-driving class after the mishap.
"I felt like an idiot," said her 18-year-old son, Dylan Young. The episode taught him "to be a lot more cautious," though he conceded that he sometimes still texts behind the wheel.
The findings released Thursday are the first federal statistics the show the prevalence of the habit among teens. Distracted driving deaths are blamed for about 16 percent of teen motor vehicle deaths.
Focusing on a cellphone instead of the road leads to delayed reaction times, lane swerves and other lapses with sometimes fatal consequences, experts say.
Thirty-nine states ban texting for all age groups. An additional five states outlaw it for novice teen drivers. And authorities are increasingly cracking down. In the last two weeks, teens in Missouri and Massachusetts have been sentenced to jail—one for a year—for fatal accidents involving texting.
For the survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year questioned more than 15,000 public and private high school students across the U.S. Some earlier studies had suggested teen texting while driving was becoming common, though perhaps not quite so high.
Still, the numbers aren't really surprising, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center in Washington. She studies how teens use technology.
A typical teen sends and receives about 100 text messages a day, and it's the most common way many kids communicate with their peers.
"A lot of teens say 'Well, if the car's not moving and I'm at a stoplight or I'm stuck in traffic, that's OK,'" said Ms. Lenhart, who has done focus groups with teens on the topic.
Other teens said texting while driving isn't safe, but they think it is safer if they hold the phone up so they can see the road and text at the same time, she said.
The CDC survey didn't ask whether the texting or emailing was done while the vehicle was moving or stopped. The survey is conducted every two years, but this was the first time it asked about texting while driving.
Mr. Young's fender bender occurred one winter afternoon while he was in crawling traffic on his way to a guitar lesson. No one was hurt.
It's frustrating that the accident didn't break him of the habit, Ms. Rimasse said. She described her son as an articulate honors student who walks to school. But he is also part of a teen culture where virtually everyone texts while driving and thinks nothing bad will happen, she lamented.
"Nothing seems to stop them," said Ms. Rimasse. "It's ridiculous."
"Everybody just does it," said her son.
CDC officials also pointed to some good news in the survey:
More teens are wearing seatbelts. Eight 8 percent said they rarely or never wear seatbelts, down from 26 percent in 1991.
Fewer teens said they drove drunk (8 percent vs. double that in the 1990s) or rode with a driver who had been drinking (24 percent, down from 40 percent).
Overall, teen deaths from motor vehicle crashes are down 44 percent in the last decade. About 3,100 teens died from traffic crashes in 2009, according to the most recent federal statistics.