People all have their opinions, but facts don't lie, and both anecdotes and statistics and experiments have shown that cell phones are a pernicious distractor. We got along for many years without cell phoning while we drive, perhaps we should try it a little longer.
I have never had anyone walk into me on the sidewalk because she was putting on her lipstick or he was eating, but I have had several walk right into me because they were looking down and texting, or playing with their "smart" phones. Now that is some powerful distraction!
Ha
I guess I am looking for statistic to show that cell phone is serious cause of death of injury in the US. Cause frankly when I look at the data I just don't see it.
In 1990 there were less than 6 million cellphone subscribers there were 44,599 traffic fatalities and the number of fatalities per 100 million highway miles was 2.08.
In 2010 there were 300 million cell phone subscribers roughly 90% of the population. I would expect that if cell phone were causing mayhem on the roads we see a big increase in deaths with 50 fold increase in cellphones.
The exact opposite has happened as this
report shows.
The number and
rate of traffic fatalities in 2010 fell to the lowest level ever recorded, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports.
According to early projections from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the 32,788 fatalities in 2010 marked a 3% drop from 2009.
In addition, the rate of 1.09 deaths per 100 million miles of vehicle travel is also the lowest since 1949, when such records were first compiled.
The latest figure is a 25% drop from 2005, when 43,510 deaths were recorded.
The department says the figures are particularly striking given that Americans drove 3 trillion miles in 2010, the most since 2007 and the third-highest ever recorded.
In fact the increase in highway safety accelerated from 2000 to 2010 compared to 1990 to 2000 despite a huge increase in cellphone usage. Now correlation isn't causation so I don't believe the cellphones are responsible for safer highways, safer cars and reduced drunk drivers are the real heroes. But US highways are pretty safe roughly 10 times safer than they were in 1940s and many countries in the world.
The average American spends about 300 hours in their car/year. If having a cell phone saves them just 5 minutes a week from avoiding missed appointments, errands, better directions, closing business deals, meeting friends, picking up kids, and the many other ways that cellphones improve our lives, that is 1.3 billion cumulative hours. I suspect that the real number is much higher. The average male has 640,000 hours in his life so 1.3 billion hours equats to 2,000+ person lives/year that would lost by banning cell phones. The NTSB says that 3092 people were killed by distracted drivers. The NTSB
report only provide handful of example of deaths caused by cellphone usage. Unless they can show that 2/3 of those distracted were on cell phones, their proposal actual cost more lives than it saves.
I get pissed when NTSB spokesperson say things like talking on a cell phone isn't worth one life. It just isn't true, the government actually puts a value on a life roughly $6-9 million depending on the agency and 1.3 billion hours is worth a lot of lives.
I retired early so I could have control over my life. Not to trade my bosses direction, for a random government employee at the TSA, NTSB, FDA or all of the other nanny state agency employee. My time and my fellow American's time is valuable, I want the damn government to start treating it as such.