That teenage driver who carelessly cut you off in traffic this morning? A recent survey by a major insurer suggests it's becoming more likely that driver was female.

The Allstate Foundation's State of Teen Driving Report suggests more teenage girls are driving aggressively, speeding and driving while distracted. The survey measured changes in teen driving since a previous survey, using the same methodology, done in 2005.

The stereotype – borne out through scientific evidence – of teen boys as aggressive and risky drivers historically has resulted in higher insurance rates for them. Allstate Foundation said its study suggests the gap might be closing, although a spokesman for the insurance giant said there isn't sufficient evidence for rates to be affected.

In a parking lot full of teen-driven cars at a recent high school basketball game, Snider High School senior Meghan Lahr, 18, said she isn't surprised by the survey's findings.

“I'm not gonna lie,” she said. “I'm kind of an aggressive driver.”

Her companion, 17-year-old Snider senior Taylor Grady, said she is the same way, admitting she's received two speeding tickets.

Those tickets, and Grady's parents' reaction to them, had an effect on her driving. Lahr's neighbors told her parents she was speeding through the neighborhood, and that, too, affected her habits.

That coincides with the Allstate survey's finding that parents remain the No. 1 influence on teen drivers.

“I've gotten ‘the talk,' ” Lahr said. “I try to be a lot more cautious now.”

Not surprising to anyone who has ever watched a teen's fingers fly over a cell-phone keypad, the study found that text messaging is the top distraction for teens when they are behind the wheel. Nearly half of teens reported it as a distraction last year, up from 31 percent in 2005, with more girls than boys admitting to using phones while driving.

Donna Toms, co-owner of Safeway Driving School Inc., was in a car with a student driver last week when her own cell phone rang. Knowing how nearly every student today has a cell phone, she turned it into a teaching moment, instructing the driver to find a safe place to pull over as if he had to take a call.

“Their cell phones are attached at the hip,” she said.

Laura McCoy, a Fort Wayne Community Schools driver's education instructor, said students in the district's program are asked to put aside their cell phones while in class and, of course, in training cars.

She's amazed by the difficulty some students have letting go. Several students have been warned they're on thin ice; one was asked to leave the program for inability to ignore the gadget.

“We're asking them to demonstrate some self-control and maturity,” she said. “We really don't want to put them on the road if they can't.”

The Allstate survey's suggestion that more girls are taking dangerous risks while driving also concerns her. Some parents have complained about girls' insurance rates rising, putting them on par with boys', and McCoy said she wouldn't be surprised if the gap lessens.

Huntington County Coroner Leon Hurlburt began a Drive Alive campaign in his county a couple of years ago hoping to reduce teen traffic deaths.

He doesn't text, and he doesn't understand its appeal to the younger generation. So he has taken to asking the young people he meets while speaking to church youth groups or 4-H clubs for advice on how to get teens to put their phones away while driving.

It's already illegal for teens to text or use their cell phones while driving in Indiana, but Hurlburt suspects the law is not being strictly enforced because it's difficult to tell a driver's age.

He'd rather see a law for all drivers, but he's afraid it will take more tragedies before public opinion demands one.

“Unfortunately, I think that's going to have to be the catalyst,” he said.

aturner@jg.net