The last few days have seen a lot of media attention about the new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which found adults to be even worse distracted drivers than the teens they so often express concern about. You can find the details here but the basic gist of it is that about half of all texting adults have sent or read texts while driving.

So what does that mean for a company concerned about the risks brought on by texting employees? Well, it probably means that your employees are doing it, for one. Or at least half of them are and that’s bad enough.

But that’s not all this study tells us. If we take into consideration another survey that shows nine out of ten adults believe that texting and emailing while driving is dangerous, we are faced with a larger question: why are adults still texting and driving if they know how bad it is?

Well, the “why” behind this can be debated endlessly; attributed to a risk-tolerant society or today’s demand to always stay connected or even chemical addiction in the user’s brain. But regardless of the reason, the fact is plain enough: few people are going to stop distracted driving by their own self control.

Paper policies may threaten disciplinary action of one kind or another but then again, dangerous driving can threaten the lives of loved ones and even that is clearly not enough to stop adult texters. To truly enforce safe driving and reduce the employer’s liability, we need a better solution.

This is the problem that we’ve set out to address from the beginning at ZoomSafer; we always begin talking about our product by saying two things: 1) There’s an increasing problem of drivers texting and emailing and using their phones while behind the wheel and 2) People cannot and will not stop this on their own. Software like our application can step in and force us all to prevent distracted driving when our own self-control is not enough.

It’s good news that this Pew study has finally blown the cover off the myth that adults are less likely to text while driving because they better understand its dangers. Employers need to understand the implications of this data: paper policies will not be enough to stop this dangerous and expensive trend.