Article content

An alarming proportion of Ontario teenagers admit that they have texted while behind the wheel of a vehicle, says a survey of Grade 7 to 12 students in the province conducted for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

The 2013 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey found that more than one-third of licensed Ontario students in Grades 10 to 12 — or an estimated 108,000 teenagers — reported having texted while driving at least once in the past year.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Teen texting while driving rampant, Ontario survey finds Back to video

For Grade 12 students alone, 46% of those who drive say they also texted at least once while operating a vehicle.

“This was a big surprise to us,” said Robert Mann, a senior scientist at CAMH in Toronto. “We know that this is a very hazardous behaviour and some of the reports in the literature suggest that texting while you’re driving can increase your chances of being involved in a collision by about 20 times or more.

“I think that texting is considered to be considerably hazardous because you have to actually type on the keyboard while you’re driving,” he said.