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Teen drivers only looking at the road about 80% of the time, says new study

By Michael Franco
July 03, 2025
Teen drivers only looking at the road about 80% of the time, says new study
Teens have admitted to an alarming amount of phone time while driving
Teens have admitted to an alarming amount of phone time while driving
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Teens have admitted to an alarming amount of phone time while driving
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Teens have admitted to an alarming amount of phone time while driving

Phones can help with navigation on roadtrips, but they can also be dangerous distractions. A new study shows just how big that distraction is among teen drivers, and the number one reason the phones are used has nothing to do with directions.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, looking at your phone for just five seconds while driving at 55 mph (88.5 km/h) is the equivalent of driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed. The agency also reports that approximately 324,819 people were involved in distracted-driving-related crashes in 2023, leading to 3,275 deaths. That works out to a shocking 890 incidents each day related to driving while distracted.

Seeking to examine distracted driving issues more deeply in the teen segment, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital had over 1,100 teen drivers in the United States complete a 38-item questionnaire about their phone use while driving. They also conducted in-person interviews with 20 high school drivers. The results were sobering.

Even though most of the teens polled understood the dangers of distracted driving, they reported spending 21.1% of each car trip they take using their phone. Put another way, that means young people are looking at their phones for about one out of every five minutes they are driving. What's more, 26.5% of them said they look at their phone for two seconds or longer each time – kind of like closing their eyes every five minutes for about 150 ft (46 m) while driving at 55 mph.

Even more surprising are the reasons why the teens polled reported looking at their phones behind the wheel: 65% of the time it was for entertainment purposes; 40% of the time it was for texting; and 30% of the time was for navigation.

“Driving distracted doesn’t just put the driver at risk of injury or death; it puts everyone else on the road in danger of an accident,” said study lead author Rebecca Robbins. “The findings from the study give us insights into the perceptions and beliefs from teenage drivers, which can be used to help create effective interventions to prevent distracted driving.”

Those interventions, say the researchers, could include setting phones to "Do Not Disturb" mode or putting phones out of reach while driving.

The study authors acknowledge the relatively small size of the study and the interviews conducted but say their methods could be a valuable framework to use for expanded research.

“In addition, we excluded schools in urban areas during the qualitative phase, given the lower prevalence of driver’s licenses in these regions,” the authors wrote. “Thus, our results may need to be replicated among urban adolescent drivers to ensure broader applicability.”

The study has been published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention.

Sources: Taylor and Francis Group; Mass General Brigham

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LifestyleDrivingCarsTeensAccidentsBrigham and Women’s Hospitalsmartphones
11 comments
Michael Franco
Michael Franco
Michael Franco has combined a masters degree in creative writing with a passion for peeking under the hood of life on Earth to write about the serious and silly sides of science and technology for years. He's published in Discovery Channel Magazine, Discover Magazine, CNET, HowToGeek, Lifehacker, and more. But by far, his favorite home so far is at New Atlas where he's allowed all the beakers and Bunsen burners he needs in which to mix his words. The mountains and beaches of central Portugal, where he now lives with his wife and two giant poodles, offer the perfect foil for way too much screen time.

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11 comments
Spud Murphy
Get caught using your phone while driving, it should be an automatic loss of license.
Ed Clark
I see younger and older folks doing this all the time on the road. They won't move when the light turns green because they are texting. They slam on the brakes at the last second when pedestrians are trying to cross the road. If only cars drove themselves, this menace would be eliminated.
Jinpa
High schools should do presentations of this to their students, so the students become aware that other drivers see the misbehavior. More local jurisdictions should police this behavior, and assist in those presentations, as should insurance companies.
Chase
All the more reason why every kid's first vehicle should be a stick-shift. It's a little harder to text and drive when both hands have something to do most of the time. Preferably, it should also be a two-seater. Basically, the perfect first vehicle is a Miata.
s0nicfreak
Clearly, even looking at/interacting with a phone for navigation is dangerous. Phone use while driving should be audio directions only; pull over if you need to look or interact.
But, I too see people of all ages using their phone while driving. Sometimes they have kids or teens in the car (their kids presumably); so they're setting the example that this is okay to those kids, as well as not caring enough about their kids' safety to put the phone down (not caring about potentially killing strangers is one thing, but your own kids?). And it's not just things like what Ed Clark talks about, sometimes I can see people come to a stop sign (sometimes just slowing down instead of actually stopping), literally not check if it's clear because they're looking at their phone, and then go (even though it's not clear because I'm already there). Whenever someone does something dangerous while looking at their phone and I honk (my bike horn that sounds like a car horn) or yell, they'll either look up from their phone confused - as if they have no idea why someone might be honking/yelling - but continue doing the dangerous thing, or yell back "sorry" without looking while continuing to do the dangerous thing. Sometimes, a passenger (I'm guessing because THEY see I'm not in a car, while the driver either doesn't look or doesn't look fast enough to process it) will yell at me to "shut up"!
All the companies that make money off of phone use should be encouraging/supporting public transit. Then phones can safely have attention for 100% of a trip! Sadly, the car industry has a bigger marketing budget.
dwieb
Lower speed limits. A lot. People won't put down their phones while driving. It's an addiction, they just won't stop. On top of that vehicles continue to get bigger and heavier, and there's oh so many new distractions in them. Meanwhile there are more bikes and pedestrians because cars are not affordable anymore. Lowering speed limits is the only way left to counteract irresponsible driver behavior. Think about it, how many deadly accidents occur in traffic jams?
Chase
@dwieb, just slapping up a lower speed limit sign without doing anything else does absolutely nothing to actually slow anyone down. The only effect is more police revenue from being able to write citations for higher amounts. If you actually want people to allow down, you have to adjust the roads themselves. Traffic Calming measures that have been repeatedly proven to work better than lowering speed limits are things like narrowing lanes, reduced number of lanes, raised crosswalks, chicanes, and more. I'm all for traffic calming measures, but just lowering speed limits is pointless.
Rusty
Once, I was driving in our city, was getting hammered by text & emails on my phone. So I pulled off the road, onto a side street and parked under the shade of a tree next to the 4 lane road. About 5-10 minutes into responding to the emails and text, someone tapped on my window! It was a county deputy. Rolled the window down and he said are you ok? I said yeah, I got hammered by email/text and just pulled off the road to check it. He said ok, when I drove by it looked like you were slumped over, was just checking on you. He then said I wish MORE PEOPLE WOULD DO THAT.
Max.au
Where I live in Australia the penalty for a driver using a mobile (cell) phone while driving is $1209.00 and 4 demerit points, Double demerit points may apply to subsequent breaches. 12 demerit points within 3 years mean loss of licence. Using includes voice, text or even holding the phone. One woman was booked for having he phone in her bra. Automatic cameras are used to photo the cabin through the windscreen to detect phone use and seatbelt use as well.
dwieb
Yes, Chase, I realize there's more to it than just changing signs (which many drivers will actually follow and cause others to slow). I was trying to make a point without getting too complex. The problem is unsafe driving habits. Self-driving cars and yet more safety tech requirements are, in my view, pie-in-the-sky solutions. Regulating speed to levels less likely to result in severe injury is possible to accomplish now. Wouldn't affect freeways, just urban roadways with documented problems.
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