Check the timing – not only are we smack-dab in the middle of NETS’ Drive Safely Work Week – we’re also halfway through AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety’s “Heads Up Driving Week” – both national campaigns targeting distracted driving.

And it’s none too soon for either anti-distracted driving safety campaign: earlier this week, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety revealed that for the 4th year in a row, drivers in America are being hugely hypocritical when it comes to distracted driving. According to a press release, the Foundation’s annual Traffic Safety Culture Index, 95% of drivers say that texting/emailing by other drivers is “a serious threat to their personal safety” – yet more than one-third (35%) of those drivers also confess to having texted/emailed while driving within the past month!

Let’s review that for a second – nearly every single person the Foundation surveyed  said other people’s cell phone-related distracted driving is super-dangerous, yet one out of three apparently has no issue putting other folks in danger by driving distracted due to cell phone use themselves.

That, my friends, is a textbook example of hypocrisy. Says AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety President and CEO Peter Kissinger:

“This research continues to illustrate a ‘Do as I Say, Not as I Do‘ attitude that persists among drivers, and perpetuates the threat of cell phone use while driving. Changing our nation’s traffic safety culture requires drivers to take responsibility for their actions and alter their own behaviors on the road.”

To get people to start thinking (and stop texting, texting, texting) – the Foundation is asking people to observe Heads Up Driving Week October 2-8 – specifically, they would really like it if you would please pledge to stop incessantly multi-tasking while behind the wheel and focus on the road. Just for one week, but hopefully “for life” once you’ve seen what it’s like.

But as the Foundation’s survey shows, there’s a problem – a big disconnect between people’s ability to recognize distracted driving as a serious issue, and their ability to recognize their own responsibility to help solve it. This is not news to us at ZoomSafer – it’s exactly why we developed software to help people break the temptation to text, email and browse while driving.

That disconnect might explain why the AAA Foundation’s survey also found that nearly nine out of ten (87%) people want their states to ban texting while driving – and 50% would like laws prohibiting all cell phone use, including hands-free use. Sharon Montgomery, a Gahanna, OH resident whose husband was killed in 2000 due to another driver’s cell phone use and who has since pushed Ohio legislators to enact a state texting ban, said this to The Columbus Dispatch:

“People realize this is dangerous, but they can’t seem to stop themselves. They’re looking for government to tell them.”

I agree with Ms. Montgomery that left to their own devices, there are many people who can’t or won’t stop themselves from giving in to the allure of cell phone distractions while they’re behind the wheel. But in addition to advocates like AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the government telling these folks to put down the phone, we also need their employers saying it, too -and saying it through cell phone use policies that employers are making efforts to enforce. When they’re not only putting themselves in danger AND breaking the law, but also violating a workplace policy, maybe then people will start listening to their own good advice.