The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?

Don't stop talking, pls. It's nice to have an INTERESTING discussion. Thanks!

Unfortunately, you can't hike off trail in these mountains without running into poison oak by the hundreds of yards. It's just part of nature.

Maybe that's why I don't run into anyone texting-while-hiking out here?

I have to agree.

If the studies are even slightly valid, then the accident rate

That the rate isn't going up is the paradox.

The only solutions to the paradox that have been proposed are either that the rate isn't going up, or that something else is masking the rate.

The "things" suggested to mask the rate must exactly cancel out the rate (both in rate and timing) for them to make any logical sense.

Such "things" suggested, to date, are, as I recall:

1. Drunk driving enforcement exactly canceling out the rates
2. Errors in the rate figures exactly canceling out the rates
3. Safety improvements of vehicles & roadways canceling the rates
4. Safety advantages of cellphones exactly outweighing distractions
5. Cellphone laws themselves preventing cellphone usage
6. Voluntary non-usage of the cellphones that are owned

Did I miss any?

If I say 'OK Google' I can apparently get something Siri-like. I've tried "Call Bob", and that indeed calls up the phone and Bob's number, but I think I have to tap something at that point. I also said "Find Costco" and ultimately google maps came up. I should really spend some time playing with it...

It has to be something that doesn't require too much attention, but it has to be words. I like music, but I need words to avoid worrying about shit. When I was riding my motorcycle I spent the first half hour with the words "...and then a wheel came off..." rolling around in my mind as I kept trying to tell myself that YES I CHECKED THE WIRES ON THE NUTS BEFORE WE LEFT...

I'm retired. Long ago (1994, maybe) I was driving my boss' car to a customer's place on Mountain Street. Little did I know that there were THREE Mountain Streets in the area. I used his car phone to call him and chew him out for not telling me which one he meant. He was a really good boss. Like my other really good boss, he quit 2 years after hiring me because he had a really bad boss, who then became MY bad boss.

I'v also tried writing notes for service calls, while driving. I'm with you, writing takes a LOT of brain RAM. I've not tried a small recorder, but that should be considerable safer. I can drive and talk on a CB or amateur radio and still be focussed on the road.

The one or two times I tried texting (many years ago) I could feel the lack of concentration on my driving.

Per Ashton Crusher:

Middle-aged cop... definitely not new on the job.

YW

It will take me a while to go through the links before I can conclude if we can find out, from those links, where the missing accidents are in the overall accident rates.

I apologize, ahead of time, for having to tell you what I say below.

I didn't want to say this, and, I already said I have to go through the links to conclude anything, but you've now said multiple times the idiotic statements you made above, which forces me to say this.

Clearly you are of low intellect, which is probably around 90 or so, because you believe, just by reading the titles of the files, that they somehow prove your point (when that's impossible, given just the titles).

Also, given your intellect, it's not surprising that you feel that the sum total of a bunch of article titles also proves, somehow, (magically perhaps?) your point.

Bear in mind that almost every title in that list fits your "scare tactic" mind (i.e., no real data - just pure emotion), which is why it's clear you're of rather low intellect (and not worth arguing with - for all the obvious reasons).

Most of those documents don't actually apply to the problem at hand. That you don't see that is yet another indication of your intellect, but, by way of example, since I probably have to spell everything out for you, this article *might* cover the accident rates before, during, and after cellphones became ubiquitous: "Longer term effects of New York State's law on drivers handheld cell phone use"

This one also may apply to the problem at hand: "Driver Cell Phone Use Rates"

This one should be directly related, if it contains good data: "Association between cellular telephone calls and motor vehicle collisions"

Likewise with this one: "Cellular Phone Use While Driving: Risks and Benefits"

Maybe this one (but looking at the authors, probably not): "The role of driver distraction in traffic crashes"

And, depending on how comprehensive this is, year to year, this one may contain related data: "2010 Motor Vehicle Crashes: Overview"

Those six are the only ones that "might" provide direct information about the paradox. That you don't see that, and that you conclude that your case is won, merely by the list itself, filled with scare-tactic titles, means you are one puppy I never want to see on a jury or designing anything that affects people's lives.

That's a key part of the paradox.

The only explanations given, other than there is no net effect on accident rates, is some preposterous alignment of the stars.

There is quite a bit of information out there, using data from accidents. It's simply a matter of looking for it. It's really a matter of trying to find exactly what you're looking for, which can be problematic. Considering how these statistics are presented, sometimes I find it hard to believe.

So, how do you keep from breaking out in poison oak/ivy rashes all the time?

I think the biggest problem is that the so-called answers are so simple, that it's shocking that they don't actually make any logical sense.

For example, most of us *feel* that the accident rate must be going up, but it's not going up.

It's sort of like the common misconception of cold weather *causing* the common cold. While cold weather can't possibly affect the causation of the common cold, people *do* get sicker in the winter (but it's because they are indoors more - not because the weather is colder).

So, at least, in that example of the common cold, you can *see* a correlation of sickness (e.g., "flu season") with the weather (even though it's a second-order effect).

Yet, with the cellphone common conception, we can't see either a first order nor a second order effect. That's the paradox.

Let's hope the two or three articles in that list that purport to shed light on the paradox actually do so. They may simply be yet another of the myriad tear jerker articles that sway dumbshits who have absolutely no science background (and therefore no basis in pure logic) like trader4 (who either is uneducated or just plain of low intelligence).

I think you consistently fail to comprehend that the *more* you show *studies* that purport to indicate the dangers of cellphone driving, the *LARGER* the paradox looms, since there is no evidence whatsoever in the governments' own statistics, of an increased rate of accidents in the USA concomitant with the skyrocketing cellphone ownership rates.

You can't just invalidate the most accurate statistics on the topic just because you don't like (or understand) the logic.

If all these scare-tactics articles are actually correct, then the paradox looms larger than ever, because the accident rate simply has not risen. Period.

So, the *answer* to the conundrum is still open as to why, and the articles are expected to help answer why - but the articles can't possibly change the answer on the accident rates (because that is a fact).

You may as well propose that the sun revolves around the earth, just because it seems to you that it does.

So he never really learned to handle it as second nature?

One thought that occurs to me in this discussion is that many people simply refuse to believe a person can manage to use a phone and still safely drive. Yet pilots do essentially that all the time. I used to fly small planes and entering the pattern, flying it, and landing a small plane at a big airport, esp with crosswinds, can be a bit of a challenge to make sure you don't screw up something. The part that comes into this discussion is that during that process you have to ready the whole time to respond to air traffic control, both to understand and follow their instructions and to talk to them on the radio, you can't just ignore them cuz "I'm busy with the flaps". They need to know you heard them so then can then talk to the guy following you. Pilots do this all the time because they LEARN to do it. There is no reason to treat drivers like children as if they can't be taught to use cell phones safety but instead you have to ban their use.

I went thru this a few years ago with the Daytime Driving Light fanatics. I collected all the research reports (where I was working at the time had a research section that could get them all for me) and went thru them all. What I found was that what you might think from both the title and the Summaries was almost never what the data showed. And the bottom line was that most of the studies were so poorly done as to be worthless. They were clearly commissioned merely to "prove" the desired political end. There were a few good ones that had actually established CONTROLS so they could properly compare before and after accidents. And the result was that 80% of those studies concluded that the data did not rise to the level of statistically sound usefulness to conclude anything. The remaining studies showed some types of accidents increased and some types of accidents decreased and that the net result of DRLs was at best a wash. They were neither useful nor harmful based on accident rates although they were clearly, based on complaints, highly irritating to a great many drivers since they shined the cars high beams into oncoming traffic in the daytime. They also increased the incidence of motorcycles being hit by cars as I recall. I thin the number of pedestrians hit went down.

In any case, what you say it true, you can't tell anything by the titles and in my experience you can't tell anything by the research either about 80% of the time. It would not surprise me if less then fifty people in the world actually read the entirety of many of these studies although millions may read some liberal arts major's newspaper story based on them having read the (misleading) summary of the report.

I would guess that pilots have to be of above average intelligence in order to get a pilot's license. It seems obvious by inspection that half the drivers are subnormal and those are the ones who can't deal with driving and phoning simultaneously.

It wasn't a pilot who ran the red light BEHIND me as I was LEGALLY crossing in a crosswalk on the green light. If I'd been two seconds slower I would have been roadkill. I couldn't actually see that the driver was a woman babbling on her phone, but I'd be willing to be money on it -- she clearly couldn't see that everybody else was stopped either.

My daughter can handle it and does all the time because she's a tour director and is on the phone constantly solving problems; I rarely use the phone and recognize that I'm unable to safely talk and drive at the same time.

Those are two traits I would NOT ascribe to Trader4. Impatient with people he disagrees with, yes. (-:

Here I think he's right, though, because it seems you're assuming some direct correlation of every new cellphone going into the hands of a driver that's never had one before. That's a pretty fatal logic flaw because it's an assumption easily disproved by researching who owns cell phones, how many, how old the users are, whether this is a first cellphone ever or a replacement, etc.

I see enough pre-teens with cellphones to know yours is a faulty main premise. I know enough people with multiple cell phones to dispute the notion that there's anything remotely like a one-to-one correspondence of each new cellphone going straight into the hands of a driver who's never had one before.

It's easily demonstrated with vectors, alas Usenet's still in the ASCII graphics world. You have a number of factors working to bring down the accident rate. Graduated licensing for young adults, key-interlocks for drunk drivers, better driver's ed, cars with accident avoidance technology, pressure from the authorities and even peer pressure. Every time I pass by a texting driver I honk the horn and wag my finger at them. One day I will probably scare one into a ditch because they always look at me with the "where am I?" look of total distraction. I often tell people I drive with to put the cellphone away when they are tempted to make a call that doesn't qualify as urgent. Do I get yack-back from them? Sure.

So there are any number of pressures working to cancel out the expected rise in the accident rate from increased cellphone usage. All most be considered when trying to determine what's happening.

Then there are some great PSA's on TV showing texting teens getting atomized by tractor-trailers or sailing off overpasses that *might* be having some effect.

But anything near a one-to-one correlation of cellphone owners and drivers can't possibly be true or supported by any statistics I've reviewed.

Tells us the market's saturated with 90% of American adults people reporting ownership of a cellphone. So all these new phone are not getting into the hands of *new* drivers.

That suggests that a lot of the new phones *aren't* going to anyone driving a car. At least not yet.

Per The Real Bev:

Bad guess: I got a pilot's license.... and quit once it dawned on me that my own incompetence could now kill me.