SAN FRANCISCO — Nearly everyone agrees that texting and driving is dangerous. Many people do it anyway.
In an AT&T-sponsored survey of drivers who text daily — regardless of where they are — 98 percent said they were aware of the dangers of texting behind the wheel. Nonetheless, three-quarters of them admitted to texting while driving, despite broad public-service campaigns and laws against it in some states.
Two-thirds said they have read text messages while stopped at a red light or stop sign, while more than a quarter said they have sent texts while driving. More than a quarter of those who texted while driving believed they ‘‘can easily do several things at once, even while driving.’’
The telephone survey of 1,004 US adults was released Wednesday by AT&T Inc. as part of a campaign against texting and driving. AT&T designed the survey with David Greenfield, founder of The Center for Internet and Technology Addiction and a professor at the University of Connecticut’s School of Medicine.
The survey came as AT&T expanded availability of a free app that silences text message alerts and activates automatically when a person is moving 15 miles per hour or faster. (Passengers can turn it off.) The DriveMode app is coming to iPhones after being previously available on Android and BlackBerry phones for AT&T users only. The iPhone version will be available to customers of competing carriers as well, but some functions will work only on AT&T devices.
The study in May was of cellphone owners ages 16 to 65 who drive almost every day and text at least once a day. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Researchers conducted surveys with people on their cellphones, and it is possible those who would have picked up on a landline might have different attitudes. It’s also possible attitudes among those who do not text as often are different. It was not immediately known what portion of daily drivers text less than once a day, excluding them from the survey.
Greenfield said the survey is the latest to show a discrepancy between people’s attitudes and behaviors.
Reggie Shaw was 19 in 2006 when he caused a car accident while texting, killing two people. Today, he speaks out against texting and driving.
‘‘It’s something I struggle with every day,’’ he said. ‘‘I know that I need to go out and talk to others about it. I don’t want others to make the same mistake I did.’’
Shaw does not remember what he was texting about right before the accident. Back then, he said, ‘‘being on my phone when I drove was something I did all the time. It was just driving to me. I guess you’d call it ignorance but I never understood that it was dangerous. How could me being on the phone cause a car accident?’’
Today, his phone is off when he is driving. Never in the past eight years since the accident, he says, has he gotten a phone call or text message that was so important that it couldn’t wait until he stopped the car.