Distracted driving: Everyone hates it, but most of us do it, study finds

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Insurance company Esurance has a new study out on distracted driving, and it makes for interesting reading. Almost everyone agrees distracted driving is bad, yet it's still remarkably prevalent. Even drivers who report rarely driving distracted also report that they engage in distracting behaviors. The study also raises some questions about the growing complexity of modern vehicles, particularly the user interfaces they confront us with.

Almost everyone does it

According to official figures, around 10 percent of all road deaths are due to distracted driving. That percentage has held steady for a while now after peaking at 15 percent a decade ago. In the time since, governments and the auto and tech industries haven't been ignoring the problem. Texting-while-driving bans are ever more common. Smartphones now have do not disturb modes, some of which can turn on automatically. Phones can also cast their displays and certain apps to the car's center stack using Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

And modern vehicles are increasingly packed full of advanced driver aids-what the industry calls ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems)-like adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, blind spot monitoring, collision alerts, and so on.

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