Study Finds Cell Phone Usage While Driving Doesn't Increase Accidents
August 21, 2007 4:34 PM | Interesting | Comments (1)
| Do you think that cell phones usage while driving leads to accidents? Well I seem to think so, although I'm guilty of using my cell phone as I drive. However, like most people I feel I can do both, unfortunately, until you get in an accident! There have been 125 studies that found cell phone usage while driving increase the incidence of accidents. Well there is always someone that will try to dispute another person's claim. Two graduate students (Saurabh Bhargave and Vikram Pathania) at the University of California, Berkeley, claim that a spike in cell phone use in recent years and on weekday evenings is not matched by an increase in fatal or non-fatal car crashes from 2002-2005. The findings were published on the website of the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. They study contradicts 125 other studies, 70% of Americans (via polling) who believe drivers on cell phones cause accidents and by 14 states have bans on using cell phones while driving. |  |
According to the study, cell phone calls generally increase after 9 p.m. because that is when "free" calling begins. However the authors expected the number of motor vehicle crashes to increase after 9 p.m. However, when they checked data, they discovered that the crash rate stayed flat and sometimes was lower. This finding surprised the economist research students.
The abstract of the study as is follows:
| "The link between cell phone use while driving and crash risk has in recent years become an area of active research. The most notable of the over 125 studies has concluded that cell phones produce a four-fold increase in relative crash risk—comparable to that produced by illicit levels of alcohol. In response, policy makers in fourteen states have either partially or fully restricted driver cell phone use. We investigate the causal link between cellular usage and crash rates by exploiting a natural experiment induced by a popular feature of cell phone plans in recent years—the discontinuity in marginal pricing at 9 pm on weekdays when plans transition from “peak” to “off-peak” pricing. We first document a jump in call volume of about 20-30% at “peak” to “off-peak” switching times for two large samples of callers from 2000-2001 and 2005. Using a double difference estimator which uses the era prior to price switching as a control (as well as weekends as a second control), we find no evidence for a rise in crashes after 9 pm on weekdays from 2002-2005. The 95% CI of the estimates rules out any increase in all crashes larger than .9% and any increase larger than 2.4% for fatal crashes. These estimates are at odds with the crash risks implied by the existing research. We confirm our results with three additional empirical approaches—we compare trends in cell phone ownership and crashes across areas of contiguous economic activity over time, investigate whether differences in urban versus rural crash rates mirror identified gaps in urban-rural cellular ownership, and finally estimate the impact of legislation banning driver cell phone use on crash rates. None of the additional analyses produces evidence for a positive link between cellular use and vehicle crashes." |
Click HERE to download the entire study!
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Comments
Posted by: Michelle | August 21, 2007 4:55 PM
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