texting caused 16,000 additional deaths between 2001 and 2007. The researchers note that around one in six road deaths are the result of cellphone-related distraction.
The figures come from the University of North Texas Health Science Center’s Jim Stimpson and Fernando Wilson. Writing in the American Journal of Public Health, they explained how they used multivariate analysis: assessing multiple sets of data to establish what relationship exists between different factors.
The data includes the 1999-2008 records of the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which covers all fatalities on public roads and what caused them. The pair also looked at records from networks about the level of cellphone use and texting among customers.
They found that the number of people killed by some form of distracted driving fell between 1999 and 2005, then rose 28% over the following three years. (The overall number of road deaths continues to fall to all-time lows.)
This was a close enough match to patterns in the volume of texts sent that Stimpson and Wilson felt confident there was a clear relationship. They believe that once you take into account that without texting-related distraction, the death rate would have continued to fall, and that a fair estimate is that 16,000 deaths came as a result of increased texting levels.
The pair didn’t assess the impact of non-texting data use, such as accessing e-mails or websites while driving, but did say it was likely to be a contributing factor.
The research concluded that both texting bans and stronger enforcement were needed to bring down the number of drivers using phones while driving. However, Wilson told Reuters that short of installing cellphone jammers in vehicles, there was no easy way to crack down as enforcement depended so much on law enforcement officials spotting offenders in the act.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Driver texting “kills 2,500 a year”
11:48 PM
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