After years of being rated as some of the worst drivers in the country, a recent study has revealed that Utah drivers are not so bad after all!

Online PR News � 10-August-2017 � After years of being rated as some of the worst drivers in the country, a recent study has revealed that Utah drivers are not so bad after all! Salt Lake City auto insurance provider ASA Insurance have called attention to the results of the Largest Distracted Driving Behavior Study, the largest distracted driving study conducted to date, performed by Zendrive Research.

Zendrive is a company focused on improving road safety through data analysis. They have designed and utilized a smart-phone-based system to measure and analyze driver behavior. In the winter of 2016, Zendrive policy experts and data scientists dug into their 10-billion mile data set to find out what they could discover about phone use behind the wheel. The recently released results were astonishing!

The Zendrive researchers commenced their study with some commonplace assumptions; that phone use while driving is both distracting and dangerous, that only a few distracted seconds while talking on a cellphone can have dire consequences, that distracted driving is fueling the increase in U.S driving deaths, that everyone has phones, and that phone usage is difficult for crash investigators to prove. The study was conducted specifically to uncover both the frequency and duration of phone usage while driving.

What we didn't know beforehand was how often people used their phone while behind the wheel. What has been revealed by the Distracted Driving Behavior Study is that Americans use the phone almost every time they get behind the wheel! "That is absolutely shocking," said a spokesperson for ASA Insurance, "we as providers of car insurance in Salt Lake City are especially distressed! It is refreshing however to see that Utah drivers ranked particularly well in the results."

Utah drivers ranked 8th in the least distracted drivers in the country, spending an average of 4.25% of their day looking at their phone while driving. The worst ranked state was Vermont, whose residents spend an average of 7.42% of their day using their phone while driving, in spite of a state ban on the practice! The least distracted drivers int eh nation are those from Oregon, who spend on average 3.7% of their day on the phone while driving. Of the ten states having the least amount of driver distraction, six have laws limiting phone use while driving, Vermont being an exception to the rule.

Asked about their thoughts on the study, our contact at ASA Insurance had this to say: "Though it is encouraging to see that Utah drivers are some of the least distracted in the country, it is troubling to see that the practice of cell phone use while driving is so common. We look forward to working with companies like Zendrive in order to eliminate the behaviors and factors which cause road accidents and deaths."

A representative from Zendrive perhaps best summed it up when he said; "Our technology allows us to bring new insights and data to problems we have been previously unable to measure, such as phone usage while driving. We believe that if you can measure it, you can manage it!"