Increased Cell Phone Use Coincides With Fewer Fatalities - Granite Grok

Increased Cell Phone Use Coincides With Fewer Fatalities

The paper pushers at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), would like to ban all cell phone use in motor vehicles.  That includes hands free, hand-held, all of it.  But after looking at the collision and fatality statistics, and skimming through the NHTSA’s Dec 2011 report on distracted driving,  the thing most likely to accomplish the stated goal of reducing distracted driving injuries and deaths would be to ban passengers altogether, prohibit talking, and then move the legal driving age up to 25.

From the NHTSA Dec 2011 Report exevutive summary key findings.

The most commonly performed potentially distracting behaviors while driving are talking to other passengers in the vehicle (80%) and adjusting the car radio (65%). Other common behaviors include eating/drinking (45%), making/accepting phone calls (40%), interacting with children in the back seat (27%), and using a portable music player (30%).

What is even more amusing is that if you look at the national data, deaths, accidents, and injuries have all declined as cell phone use has increased. 

US traffic deths since 1900
US traffic deaths since 1900

According to the US census in 1997 there were 17.9 million accidents and 53,000 deaths as a result (includes deaths months after the crash resulting form injuries received).  In 2009 there were 7.1 million fewer accidents (10.8 mil), and 17,000 fewer deaths (35,900).

Deaths per 100 million miles traveled dropped from 1.7 to 1.1; per 100k licensed drivers it dropped from 23.9 to 16.1; per 100k registered vehicles dropped from 21.1 to 13.1; and per 100k in population from 15.6 to 11.0.

Cell phone use skyrocketed.  These things must be the CO2 of accident reduction in the US.  The more CO2 we have the colder it gets and the more cell phones there are the fewer accidents there are.  Call it settled science.

The National Transportation Safety Administrations (NHTSA) FARS reporting system mirrors the census data.  More drivers, more vehicles, more miles traveled, and fewer crashes and fewer deaths.  All while exponentially adding cell phones, and presumably, cell phone use.

So what gives? Why the NTSB warning? Simply put, it’s crap.  The federal government must be looking for an excuse to tie more strings to highway money so they can get the states to do their bidding without the burden of waiting for the people, or their legislators, to discover just how awesome central planning can be.

It has nothing to do with crashes or deaths.  If it did they’d have been honest about the real problem.

The common denominator in crash and fatality data are the same today as they were 30 years ago,  inexperience, speed, and alcohol.  Any or all combinations of these three things produce a majority of the damage and loss of life.   Distraction, for all the burden it is asked to bear, and all the bad press it gets, has become a buzz word for what is nothing more than a lack of experience, mixed with a touch of disrespect for the risks and the absence of maturity about your own limitations.  The same goes for speed and chemical abuse.   Cell phones are just a visible scapegoat.  Banning them will not solve anything unless you want to reduce productivity.

Rumor has it that responsible cell phone use while driving increases productivity, saving billions annually.  You could argue that it saves or creates jobs.  Is this another Fast and Furious? Does Obama’s NTSB want to reduce productivity by peddling a faulty premise about driver safety?  I’ll let the conspiracy folks work on that one.

In the meantime,we should accept that distractions do cause accidents but that it is the inexperience of the driver who allows themselves to be distracted at the worst possible moments.  That by teaching them to be more responsible, and not blaming cell phones for example, we can continue the downward trend we have seen in recent years.

Driving is serious business.  Maybe if more of us treated it that way, if we made a concerted effort to change the driving culture, we could avoid these ridiculous assertions by over budgeted bureaucrats trying to demonstrate their own usefulness by punishing everyone for the oversights of a few.  We do not need or want a federal mandate.  If there is a problem, each state or city can work out what they need to do to address their situation.  And they should do it based on real statistics, and real goals.

As for the national data, well…why don’t we just argue that cell phones have changed how people are distracted, coinciding with a historic decrease in collisions and deaths?  Isn’t that front page headline material?  I think it is.

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