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Should we ban cell phones in cars? No.

As state legislatures around the country rush to ban the use of cell phones in cars, I thought it would be a good time to pause and consider a few facts about cell phones and traffic safety over the past few years.

Or if you prefer your data in graphs, I made these three with data from the NHTSA, Neilson survey, The Pew Center and the U.S. Census.

Car-crashes-and-cell-phone-use

Texting-and-driving

carpooling-fatalities

These facts and data show us that despite all the sensationalistic claims like “talking on a cell phone is more dangerous than drunk driving,” the rapid proliferation of cell phones and text messaging in cars has not made our roads more dangerous. On the contrary, our roads have become dramatically safer over the last decade.

Is this increased safety due to a decline in carpooling? Perhaps.

After all, if you ignore the results from fancy “eye-ball tracking” studies and driving simulators, which are not very applicable to the real world anyway, and just ask motorists what they find distracting, they will tell you something surprising. Crying children, it seems, are one of the biggest distractions motorists face. At least that is according to a survey conducted by Leasetrader.com. So maybe we should let cell phones be, and just ban carpooling instead.

Driven to distraction

Previous topics mentioned in this post:

Is it time to ban carpooling?

The graph the New York Times doesn’t want you to see


Related Posts with Thumbnails

2 Comments

  1. Nick M says:

    Are you serious? Which conservative “think tank” do you work for?

    You have zero credibility here. You don’t display article comments, and don’t even list your real name. On the About page you equate universal health care with… free refills on soda??? Give me a break. Your site stinks of lies.

  2. Free Refills says:

    I think you’ll find that I do display article comments. The reason it looked like I did not on this post is because yours was the first comment. The rest were trackbacks, which Wordpress counts as comments–and yes, the trackbacks are displayed.

    As to your other assertions, I am actually quite liberal. On this particular issue, however, the arguments that safety advocates are making don’t add up. If cell phones were uniquely distracting, then are roads today wouldn’t be safer than ever before.

    And as to equating Free Refills to universal healthcare—well, sarcasm. Besides, thanks to President Obama we now have both health care AND free refills! Score America.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

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