Friday, June 30, 2006

Cell phones cause accidents, new study fancifully pretends.


Wired has an article about cell phones being just as dangerous as alcohol, when it comes to traffic accidents. That's pretty scary, when you consider the fact I see people talking on the phone on every trip I make. I only see drunk drivers one in every two trips.

Luckily, it's all bullshit.

In the US, total highway fatalities have remained essentially the same, maybe declined slightly since 1982, even while cell phone use has grown dramatically.

Meanwhile, alcohol is responsible for about half of those fatalities, about 20,000 per year.

If cell phones are just as deadly, why hasn't the number of highway fatalities increased by 50%? Why haven't highway fatalities increased AT ALL?

Maybe they meant some new type of dangerous, one where no one actually gets hurt.