Texting While Driving and risk-taking behaviors among college students

Introduction: Existing research describes Texting (reading and sending) while Driving (TWD), a risky behavior, increasing the risk of road traffic crashes and injuries, especially in young adults. This study aimed to examine the independent relationship between high-risk driving behavior and TWD among college students.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study of college students recruited from a State University, and a midsize two-year community college in California, United States.The self-administered questionnaire consisted of 50 individual and composite items, including texting behavior, risk-taking behavior, impulsivity, history of driving and texting, and accidents, as well as socio-demographics, among others. The main outcome variables were sending/sending texts while driving in the past 30 days. The main predictor variable was risk-taking behavior, which was measured based on a 13-item 4-point Likert scale from 0 = never, to 3 = 6 or more times. In order to shorten the number of risky driving questions in entering the regression model, we used the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). There were extracted three factors using the PCA. We used SPSS 21 for data analyses to provide descriptive statistics and Multi-variate logistic regression.Results: Of 272 participating students (61%) were males (M = 22.79±6.85). More than 40% of the students experience previous car crashes, of which 2.3% involved talking on a cellphone. About 60% and 70% of the students SEND or READ text messages while driving at least once in the past 30-day, respectively. Logistic Regression analysis revealed that TWD behaviors were significantly related to risky driving behavior controlling for confounding variables of age, gender and ethnicity. Of three extracted factors for risky driving status, the first factor with the OR= 3.05 (CI95%: 1.84-5.06) and second factor with the OR=1.56 (CI95%:1.06-2.27) were statistically significant Conclusions: TWD was a common behavior among college students and was associated to high risk-taking behaviors. Our findings underline behaviors that could be targeted for preventing TWD in college students

Keywords:

Texting while driving , risky driving , road injuries , risk-taking behavior , college students