Research shows cellphone use may not cause more car crashes
For almost twenty years, it has been a wide-held belief that talking on a cellphone while driving is dangerous and leads to more accidents. However, fresh research from Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that talking on a cellphone while driving does not increase crash risk.
Published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the probe uses data from a major cellphone provider and accident reports to contradict previous findings that connected cellphone use to enlargened crash risk. Such findings include the influential one thousand nine hundred ninety seven paper in the Fresh England Journal of Medicine, which concluded that cellphone use by drivers enhanced crash risk by a factor of Four.3—effectively equating its danger to that of illicit levels of alcohol. The findings also raise doubts about the traditional cost-benefit analyses used by states that have, or are, implementing cellphone-driving bans as a way to promote safety.
“Using a cellphone while driving may be distracting, but it does not lead to higher crash risk in the setting we examined,” said Saurabh Bhargava, assistant professor of social and decision sciences in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “While our findings may strike many as counterintuitive, our results are precise enough to statistically call into question the effects typically found in the academic literature. Our probe differs from most prior work in that it leverages a naturally occurring experiment in a real-world context.”
For the investigate, Bhargava and the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Vikram S. Pathania examined calling and crash data from two thousand two to 2005, a period when most cellphone carriers suggested pricing plans with free calls on weekdays after nine p.m. Identifying drivers as those whose cellphone calls were routed through numerous cellular towers, they very first demonstrated that drivers enhanced call volume by more than seven percent at nine p.m. They then compared the relative crash rate before and after nine p.m. using data on approximately eight million crashes across nine states and all fatal crashes across the nation. They found that the enhanced cellphone use by drivers at nine p.m. had no corresponding effect on crash rates.
Additionally, the researchers analyzed the effects of legislation banning cellphone use, enacted in several states, and similarly found that the legislation had no effect on the crash rate.
“One thought is that drivers may compensate for the distraction of cellphone use by selectively determining when to make a call or consciously driving more cautiously during a call,” Bhargava said. “This is one of a few explanations that could explain why laboratory studies have shown different results. The implications for policymakers considering bans depend on what is actually driving this lack of an effect. For example, if drivers do compensate for distraction, then penalizing cellphone use as a secondary rather than a primary offense could make sense. In the least, this probe and others like it, suggest we should revisit the presumption that talking on a cellphone while driving is as dangerous as widely perceived.”
Pathania, a fellow in the London School of Economics Managerial Economics and Strategy group, added a cautionary note. “Our examine focused solely on talking on one’s cellphone. We did not, for example, analyze the effects of texting or Internet browsing, which has become much more popular in latest years. It is certainly possible that these activities pose a real hazard.”
More information: Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence (with Vikram Pathania), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Vol. Five, No. Trio, pp. 92-125, 2013. www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/ … Pathania2013_AEJ.pdf
Provided by: Carnegie Mellon University
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Research shows cellphone use may not cause more car crashes
Research shows cellphone use may not cause more car crashes
For almost twenty years, it has been a wide-held belief that talking on a cellphone while driving is dangerous and leads to more accidents. However, fresh research from Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that talking on a cellphone while driving does not increase crash risk.
Published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the examine uses data from a major cellphone provider and accident reports to contradict previous findings that connected cellphone use to enhanced crash risk. Such findings include the influential one thousand nine hundred ninety seven paper in the Fresh England Journal of Medicine, which concluded that cellphone use by drivers enlargened crash risk by a factor of Four.3—effectively equating its danger to that of illicit levels of alcohol. The findings also raise doubts about the traditional cost-benefit analyses used by states that have, or are, implementing cellphone-driving bans as a way to promote safety.
“Using a cellphone while driving may be distracting, but it does not lead to higher crash risk in the setting we examined,” said Saurabh Bhargava, assistant professor of social and decision sciences in CMU’s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “While our findings may strike many as counterintuitive, our results are precise enough to statistically call into question the effects typically found in the academic literature. Our probe differs from most prior work in that it leverages a naturally occurring experiment in a real-world context.”
For the explore, Bhargava and the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Vikram S. Pathania examined calling and crash data from two thousand two to 2005, a period when most cellphone carriers suggested pricing plans with free calls on weekdays after nine p.m. Identifying drivers as those whose cellphone calls were routed through numerous cellular towers, they very first showcased that drivers enlargened call volume by more than seven percent at nine p.m. They then compared the relative crash rate before and after nine p.m. using data on approximately eight million crashes across nine states and all fatal crashes across the nation. They found that the enlargened cellphone use by drivers at nine p.m. had no corresponding effect on crash rates.
Additionally, the researchers analyzed the effects of legislation banning cellphone use, enacted in several states, and similarly found that the legislation had no effect on the crash rate.
“One thought is that drivers may compensate for the distraction of cellphone use by selectively determining when to make a call or consciously driving more cautiously during a call,” Bhargava said. “This is one of a few explanations that could explain why laboratory studies have shown different results. The implications for policymakers considering bans depend on what is actually driving this lack of an effect. For example, if drivers do compensate for distraction, then penalizing cellphone use as a secondary rather than a primary offense could make sense. In the least, this explore and others like it, suggest we should revisit the presumption that talking on a cellphone while driving is as dangerous as widely perceived.”
Pathania, a fellow in the London School of Economics Managerial Economics and Strategy group, added a cautionary note. “Our explore focused solely on talking on one’s cellphone. We did not, for example, analyze the effects of texting or Internet browsing, which has become much more popular in latest years. It is certainly possible that these activities pose a real hazard.”
More information: Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence (with Vikram Pathania), American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Vol. Five, No. Trio, pp. 92-125, 2013. www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/ … Pathania2013_AEJ.pdf
Provided by: Carnegie Mellon University
Explore further
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Doctors urged to talk to patients about parking cellphones
Family physicians regularly counsel patients about medical risks associated with heart disease, stroke, diabetes and smoking, and a team from the University of Alberta wants to add cellphone use and driving to the discussion.
Early research on cellphone conversations likely overestimated crash risk: investigate
A Wayne State University probe published in the January two thousand twelve issue of the journal Epidemiology points out that two influential early studies of cellphone use and crash risk may have overestimated the relative risk of conversation .
CQ Researcher examines dispersed driving
More than Five,000 people die each year in vehicle crashes caused by dissipated driving, many who were texting and talking on cellphones behind the wheel, according to the May four issue of CQ Researcher (published by CQ Press, .