One of the reasons that cell phone bans don’t seem to reduce traffic accidents is that in the scheme of things, talking on the cell phone is not one of the more dangerous activities that drivers regularly engage in.
And even if you do managed to stop people from yakking on the phone, they’ll just come up with [...]
Posts Tagged ‘cell phone ban’
You can ban cell phones but you can’t ban stupid [distracted driving]
They thought car radios were dangerous too… [cell phone ban]
It strikes me that a lot of the hysteria about the dangers posed by cell phones in cars boils down to little more than plain old technophobia.
After all, there is no reason to believe that cell phones are uniquely distracting. Both academic studies and surveys suggest that they are in fact less of a distraction [...]
Cell phones aren’t dangerous, toddlers are.
For months I’ve been saying that when it comes to distracted driving, passengers—crying children, in particular—pose a greater accident risk than cell phones. That is why I proposed banning carpooling.
It seems that others are finally catching on. Today the Consumer Reports blog ran a post about how dangerous diving with kids can be and the [...]
This is where I draw the line [distracted driving]
Regular readers of this blog know that I am very skeptical of schemes to ban the use of cell phones in cars. After all, there is little reason to believe that using a cell phone while driving is any more distracting than, say, adjusting confusing radio controls or driving around with a car full of [...]
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.
Cell phone use has exploded over the past decade. In 2008, over 83 percent [...]
The graph the New York Times doesn’t want you to see
This post has been getting a huge amount of search-engine traffic recently. Thank you for the visits! If you’re looking for more data on the dangers (or lack thereof) of cell phones in cars, check out this post as well.
Regular readers of this blog will know that the New York Times is waging a sensationalistic campaign to [...]
Remember when GM had balls?
Remember the good old days before General Motors was a government company?
When it purchased and dismantled streetcar networks across America;
When it fought tooth-and-nail against mandatory seatbelt legislation;
When it abandon its hometown of Flint, MI and laid off 30,000 people while making record profits;
When it led the charge to defeat new fuel economy standards, again, and [...]
What do you think? Should we ban cell phones while driving?
Last week’s post on the push to ban cell phone use in cars and the dangers of carpooling got a lot of attention. So what do you think?
DiscussionsView Results
Is it time to ban carpooling?
It took the police almost an hour to arrive at the scene of the accident. The dark red Saturn with its crumpled front end and my 2001 VW GTI with its smashed side panels and broken rear axle had already been cleared from the road. Shattered glass and the remnants of my passenger-side mirror still littered [...]
Yellow Journalism Watch: New York Times continues its assault on the freedoms of motorists
For a paper based in the most pedestrian-oriented city in the country, the editors at the New York Times sure have it in for America’s motorists. For the last few weeks, the Times has been running a series called “Driven to Distraction” about the extreme dangers purportedly posed by motorists who chat on their cell [...]
