Montgomery, AL Cell Phones and driving

[jdbower]

Some interesting stats about 2008:

There were 5.8 million car crashes(1)

There were 255,917,664 registered vehicles(2)

Cell phone market penetration in the US was 86.79%(3)

How many of those crashes were caused by cell phones? Let's look 10 years earlier to 1998:

Cell phone penetration was 24.62%(3)

We had 6.3 million car crashes(4) with 215,496,003(2) registered vehicles.

OK, both fewer crashes AND more cars in 2008, but how many fatalities? "In 2008, the number of overall traffic fatalities reached a record low since 1961, and that number continued to decrease in the first few months of 2009."(1)

What does this mean? Obviously as cell phone penetration skyrockets the use of phones while driving goes way up, but the number of accidents is going down and the seriousness of the accidents are going down. While the seriousness can be attributed to better safety features, distracted driving doesn't benefit nearly as much from this since the accident frequently happens before you can react.

My conclusion: Distracted/bad drivers will be distracted by SOMETHING when driving and picking on cell phones, while politically expedient, does nothing for overall safety. What we need are laws that can cover anyone who's driving irratically instead of trying to get legislation through that picks on each potential distraction. I saw a guy making a turn in Cambridge while eating a salad in his car, daily I see people using the rearview mirror to shave or put on makeup, yelling at the radio, turning to talk to people in the back seat, reading a book, and a whole host of other potentially dangerous behavior.

My solution is to get rid of seatbelt laws, allow people to flip a switch to disarm airbags and other safety features, and let Darwin do his thing. In a few generations we'll have people who pay attention to the road or multitask in an appropriate manner or at least use safety features.

And in case you're wondering, I hate talking on the phone and I hate driving in Boston traffic (which is too bad, because I love driving) - I don't think the two have ever intersected but I do have a monaural Bluetooth headset for when I need to take a conference call on the walk to work.