Thread: Phone use overtakes not wearing seatbelts as cause of fatal car accidents

The conclusion, to my mind, has to be that phone use is not a major factor, let alone "cause" of fatal accidents.

Please read Johns quote and then look up accident stats in USA
between sates that have:
-Illegal phone use
-Fully licensed driver only phone use
-Whomever driver phone use

Anecdotes on Pennants Hills Road and swerving drivers dont equal statistics...
Sure inattentive drivers are inattentive - but we have a beautiful set of subject and control data in the USA and the premise that phone use while driving leads to increased road crashes does not hold.


S

Originally Posted by C00P

You have assumed that making it illegal to use the phone while driving has significantly affected the extent of phone use while driving. You would need to be able to prove that first, before drawing your conclusion.

Given the extent of mobile phone use in cars here in SA and the fact that it IS illegal, I wonder if passing the law does make much difference?
If not, then you wouldn't see much difference in the accident stats either.

Coop

Yes, I did consider adding that rider to the comment, and I certainly am under no illusions that an unenforceable law like this is very effective, although I would think it should still cut use enough to show up in the figures.

But the really telling bit of evidence is that as mobile phones have gone from non-existent to ubiquitous, use in cars has to have dramatically increased - and all the anecdotal evidence agrees with this. But over the same period, accident, death and injury rates have gone steadily down - hardly compatible with phone use as the major "cause" of fatal accidents.

John

Originally Posted by Tote

I'm not saying that using a phone while driving is a good thing but the reactions on this thread are exactly what the road safety council need to demonise it and use it as an excuse to ratchet up fines generally. Maybe next they'll dream up some statistics that 4wds with 50mm lifts are a major contributor to the road toll....

My main grumble was that they were using some made up claims to justify their position that mobile phones were the major contributor to the road toll. If that is the case either the speeders or the drunks need a pat on the back as they must have significantly declined as the road toll has been going down.

Regards,
Tote

Disagree - they don't need the reactions on this thread or anywhere else to "demonise" the use of phones by drivers / riders.

Anybody who has a phone in his / her hand when in control of a motor vehicle is a brainless idiot and deserves to have the book thrown at them - end of story.

Perth Police have recently conducted a campaign where police officers on unmarked motor cycles armed with cameras mingled with the traffic and photographed people using phones when driving. They then radio'd the details of the vehicle and offence to other officers nearby in a marked police vehicle who pulled the offending vehicle over and the driver was charged.

They caught hundreds of offenders in the short period of the campaign, and are now considering bringing in the procedure on a permanent basis, though they will fit the motorcycles with blue light and siren so that the officers can pull over the offending drivers directly without the need for a second police vehicle.

I congratulate them on this initiative - should be much more of it. Get these bloody clowns off the road.

"Anybody who has a phone in his / her hand when in control of a motor vehicle is a brainless idiot and deserves to have the book thrown at them - end of story."

But Kal, the statistics in the USA where in some states phone use is not an offense vs some states where it is an offense are relatively consistent. The use of phones does not appear to contribute greatly to crashes.

Lack of attention is indeed an important consideration for road safety but the USA evidence shows a phone is no more so attention keeping than listening to the radio or talking with other occupants or dreaming about the weekend. I guess it is a bit hard to fine someone for not concentrating on driving...

S

Originally Posted by roverrescue

"Anybody who has a phone in his / her hand when in control of a motor vehicle is a brainless idiot and deserves to have the book thrown at them - end of story."

But Kal, the statistics in the USA where in some states phone use is not an offense vs some states where it is an offense are relatively consistent. The use of phones does not appear to contribute greatly to crashes.
I think that what the US statistics show is that making it an offence to use a phone may not reduce crashes. Maybe stopping people using phones would have an impact. There is a difference.
Lack of attention is indeed an important consideration for road safety but the USA evidence shows a phone is no more so attention keeping than listening to the radio or talking with other occupants or dreaming about the weekend. I guess it is a bit hard to fine someone for not concentrating on driving...
The US evidence doesn't actually show that. However there is quite a bit of research that shows that holding a conversation on a mobile is significantly different from holding a conversation with a passenger in the car and very different from listening to the radio.
S

Surely the important questions are:

Is there credible evidence that the roads would be safer if people did not use mobile phones while driving?
While there is some conflicting evidence, on balance it seems that the answer is that it would help.

Is the law banning phone use enforceable?
While there are obviously still a lot of people ignoring the law and getting away with it, there are an increasing number of people being caught. The fact that some get away with it does not mean we should not have that law. After all, a lot of people get away with drink driving, yet most of us would agree that we need a law against that.

The argument that other things are also a distraction does not hold water. There are plenty of other things that contribute to crashes that we can't legislate against (like stupidity). We can legislate against phone us, we can enforce it and there is evidence that it helps.

Originally Posted by vnx205

Surely the important questions are:

Is there credible evidence that the roads would be safer if people did not use mobile phones while driving?
While there is some conflicting evidence, on balance it seems that the answer is that it would help.

As far as I can see, the evidence that it increases safety is quite limited - while I have no doubt that it does increase safety, the steady decrease in accidents since these devices became ubiquitous argues quite strongly that the increase in safety is quite limited.

Is the law banning phone use enforceable?
While there are obviously still a lot of people ignoring the law and getting away with it, there are an increasing number of people being caught. The fact that some get away with it does not mean we should not have that law.

The question is what proportion get caught. I suggest that it is very small, but perhaps increasing. I think we probably need the law, but what we do not need is the quite clearly erroneous suggestion that it is the major cause of fatal accidents.

After all, a lot of people get away with drink driving, yet most of us would agree that we need a law against that.

The statistics strongly argue that this is the major factor in fatal accidents,and probably most others as well. No such statistical evidence is available for phone use. And it is easy to test for, while phone use is not. I suggest that a substantial part of the reduction in road deaths over the last thirty years has been gradual change of culture to where it has become socially unacceptable in most circles to drive under the influence. While part of this change has been driven in part by random breath tests, these by themselves have not been the major factor. Remember that driving under the influence has been an offence since very early in motoring history.

The argument that other things are also a distraction does not hold water. There are plenty of other things that contribute to crashes that we can't legislate against (like stupidity). We can legislate against phone us, we can enforce it and there is evidence that it helps.

I do not believe it is enforceable most of the time. I perhaps should comment, that I do not use my phone while driving - and my family knows that if they phone me while I am driving it will not be answered until I have an opportunity to pull off the road!

John

I have to agree that phone use does take attention away. I have had phones in my cars since 1988 and unlike most I've always had fixed kits for the handset I've had at the time.

What I have noticed for example, while I travel the same route to work each day, on one occasion while talking on the phone I neglected to change lanes to the extent that I missed the off ramp.

This is only a single incidence where it was obvious my attention was not completely on the task at hand. Would the partial lack of attention be the cause of a crash? It has that potential but hasn't so far.

I suppose that with any law, it is appropriate to balance the benefit against the disadvantages. There have been changes to legislation where the disadvantages have outweighed the advantages.

While it is not really in the same league, I believe that changes to the first home buyers grant have had the unintended consequence of effectively locking a lot of first home buyers out of the market. That is just the first example I can come up with at the moment.

So in the case of mobile phones, there is some evidence that it might be better to ban them. I accept that the evidence may be weak or inconclusive. I think in some circumstances it may be that phone usage contributed significantly to a crash, but because there are usually other, more easily identifiable contributing factors, phone usage does not show up in the statistics as much as it should.

However, I believe that in some circumstances, it is possible to find evidence, (from phone records, I assume) that a phone was in operation at the time of an accident.

So in considering the disadvantages of making it an offence to use a phone while driving, I ask the question, does anyone really need to use a phone while driving? How serious an inconvenience is it to refrain from using the phone while driving? A lot of people don't use them and it doesn't seem to create a problem for them or diminish their lives in any way.