{"id":64297,"date":"2014-10-08T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=64297"},"modified":"2014-10-03T01:22:42","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T06:22:42","slug":"the-no-1-cause-of-traffic-fatalities-its-not-texting-its-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/10\/08\/the-no-1-cause-of-traffic-fatalities-its-not-texting-its-driving\/","title":{"rendered":"The No. 1 Cause of Traffic Fatalities? It’s Not Texting, It’s Driving"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t yet have a copy of Matt Richtel\u2019s new book,\u00a0A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention<\/em><\/a>. Based on his Pulitzer-prize winning reporting for the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, however, I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s unlikely to do justice to\u00a0the complexity of the relationship between mobile phones and motor vehicle\u00a0accidents. Worse, I fear it distracts attention from the most important cause of traffic fatalities: driving.<\/p>\n

A bad sign<\/strong><\/p>\n

The other day Richtel\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0a link to this\u00a0old news article<\/a>\u00a0that claims texting causes more fatal accidents for teens than alcohol. The article says some researcher estimates \u201cmore than 3,000 annual teen deaths from texting,\u201d but there is no reference to a study or any source for the data used to make the estimate. As I\u00a0previously noted<\/a>, that\u2019s not plausible.<\/p>\n

In fact, only\u00a02,823 teens teens died<\/a>\u00a0in motor vehicle accidents in 2012 (only 2,228 of whom were vehicle occupants). So, I get 7.7 teens per day dying in motor vehicle accidents, regardless of the cause. I\u2019m no Pulitzer-prize winning\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0journalist, but I reckon that makes this giant factoid on Richtel\u2019s website wrong, which doesn\u2019t bode well for the book:<\/p>\n

\"1<\/a><\/p>\n

In fact, I\u00a0suspect the 11-per-day meme comes from\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>\u00a0(or someone they got it from) doing the math wrong on that\u00a0Newsday<\/em>number of 3,000 per year and calling it \u201cnearly a dozen<\/a>\u201d (3,000 is 8.2 per day).\u00a0And if you Google around looking for this 11-per day statistic, you find sites like textinganddrivingsafety.com, which, like Richtel does in his website video, attributes the statistic to the \u201cInstitute for Highway Safety.\u201d I think they mean the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is\u00a0the source I used for the 2,823 number above. (The fact that he gets the name wrong suggests\u00a0he got the statistic\u00a0second-hand.) IIHS has an\u00a0extensive page of facts<\/a>\u00a0on distracted driving, which doesn\u2019t have any fact\u00a0like this (they actually express skepticism about inflated claims of cellphone effects).<\/p>\n

After\u00a0I contacted him to complain about that 11-teens-per-day statistic, Richtel pointed out that the\u00a0page I linked to<\/a>\u00a0is run by his publisher, not him, and that he had asked them to \u201cdeal with that stat.\u201d I now see that the page includes a footnote that says, \u201cStatistic taken from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety\u2019s Fatality Facts.\u201d I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true, however, since the\u00a0\u201cFatality Facts\u201d page for teenagers<\/a>\u00a0still shows 2,228 teens (passengers and drivers) killed in 2012. Richtel added in his email to me:<\/p>\n

\n

As I\u2019ve written in previous writings, the cell phone industry also takes your position that fatality rates have fallen. It\u2019s a fair question. Many safety advocates point to air bags, anti-lock brakes and wider roads \u2014 billions spent on safety \u2014 driving down accident rates (although accidents per miles driven is more complex). These advocates say that accidents would\u2019ve fallen far faster without mobile phones and texting. And they point out that rates have fallen far faster in other countries (deaths per 100,000 drivers) that have tougher laws. In fact, the U.S.\u00a0rates, they say, have fallen less far than most other countries.\u00a0Thank you for your thoughtful commentary on this. I think it\u2019s a worthy issue for conversation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I appreciate his response. Now I\u2019ll read the book before complaining about him any more.<\/p>\n

The shocking truth<\/strong><\/p>\n

I generally oppose\u00a0scare-mongering manipulations of data that take advantage of common ignorance. The people selling\u00a0mobile-phone panic don\u2019t dwell on the fact\u00a0that the roads are getting safer and safer, and just let you go on assuming\u00a0they\u2019re getting more and more dangerous. I reviewed all that\u00a0here<\/a>, showing the increase in mobile phone subscriptions relative to the decline in traffic accidents, injuries, and deaths.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean texting and driving\u00a0isn\u2019t dangerous. I\u2019m sure it is. Cell phone bans may be a good idea, although the\u00a0evidence that they save lives is mixed<\/a>.\u00a0But the overall situation is surely more complicated than TEXTING-WHILE-DRIVING EPIDEMIC suggests.\u00a0The whole story doesn\u2019t seem right \u2014 how can phones be so dangerous, and growing more and more\u00a0pervasive, while accidents and injuries fall? At the very least, a powerful part of the explanation is being left out. (I wonder if phones displace other distractions, like eating and putting on makeup; or if some people drive more cautiously while they\u2019re using their phones, to compensate for their distraction; or if distracted phone users were simply\u00a0the worst drivers already.)<\/p>\n

Beyond the general complaint about misleading people and abusing our ignorance, however, the texting scare distracts us (I know, it\u2019s ironic) from the giant problem staring us in the face: our addiction to private vehicles itself costs thousands of lives a year (not including the environmental effects).<\/p>\n

To illustrate this, I went through all the trouble of getting data on\u00a0mobile phone subscriptions<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0state, to compare with\u00a0state traffic fatality rates<\/a>, only to find this: nothing:<\/p>\n

\"cellphones<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

What does predict deaths? Driving. This isn\u2019t a joke. Sometimes the obvious answer is obvious because it\u2019s the answer:<\/p>\n

\"cellphones<\/a><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested, I also put both of these variables in a regression, along with age and sex composition of the states, and the percentage of employed people who drive to work. Only the miles and drive-to-work\u00a0rates were\u00a0correlated with vehicle deaths. Mobile phone subscriptions had no effect at all.<\/p>\n

Also, pickups?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Failing to find a demographic predictor that accounts for any of the variation after that explained by miles driven, I tried one more thing. I calculated each state\u2019s deviation from the line predicted by miles driven (for example Alaska, where they only drive 6.3 thousand miles per person, is predicted to\u00a0have 4.5 deaths per 100,000 but they actually have 8.1, putting that state 3.6 points above the line). Taking those numbers and pouring them into the\u00a0Google correlate tool<\/a>, I asked what people in those states with higher-than-expected death rates are searching for. And the leading answer is large, American pickup trucks. Among the 100 searches most correlated with this variable, 10 were about Chevy, Dodge, or Ford pickup trucks, like \u201c2008 chevy colorado\u201d (r<\/em>\u00a0= .68),\u00a0shown here:<\/p>\n

\"1<\/a><\/p>\n

I could think of several reasons why places where people are into pickup trucks have more than their predicted share of fatal accidents.<\/p>\n

So, to sum up:\u00a0texting while driving\u00a0is dangerous and getting more common as driving is getting safer, but driving still kills thousands of Americans every year, making it the umbrella social problem under which texting may be one contributing factor.<\/p>\n

I used this analogy before, and the parallel\u00a0isn\u2019t perfect, but the texting panic reminds me of the 1970s \u201cCrying Indian\u201d ad I used to see when I was watching Saturday morning cartoons. The ad\u00a0famously pivoted from industrial pollution to littering in the climactic final seconds:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Conclusion: Keep your eye on the ball.<\/p>\n

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog\u00a0<\/span>Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on\u00a0<\/span>Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/span>Facebook<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t yet have a copy of Matt Richtel\u2019s new book,\u00a0A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention. Based on his Pulitzer-prize winning reporting for the\u00a0New York Times, however, I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s unlikely to do justice to\u00a0the complexity of the relationship between mobile phones and motor vehicle\u00a0accidents. Worse, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":64300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,233,221,290,293,23647],"class_list":["post-64297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-death","tag-cars","tag-sciencetechnology","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-social-problems"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/09\/1-3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64297"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64373,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64297\/revisions\/64373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}