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Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence: The Link Between Cell Phone Use and Vehicle Crashes
Saurabh Bhargava, Vikram Pathania. Working Paper 07-15. Jul 2007.
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The link between cell phone use while driving and crash risk has in recent years become an area of active research. The most notable of the over 125 studies has concluded that cell phones produce a four-fold increase in relative crash risk?comparable to that produced by illicit levels of alcohol. In response, policy makers in fourteen states have either partially or fully restricted driver cell phone use. We investigate the causal link between cellular usage and crash rates by exploiting a natural experiment induced by a popular feature of cell phone plans in recent years?the discontinuity in marginal pricing at 9 pm on weekdays when plans transition from ?peak? to ?off-peak? pricing. We first document a jump in call volume of about 20-30% at ?peak? to ?off-peak? switching times for two large samples of callers from 2000-2001 and 2005. Using a double difference estimator which uses the era prior to price switching as a control (as well as weekends as a second control), we find no evidence for a rise in crashes after 9 pm on weekdays from 2002-2005. The 95% CI of the estimates rules out any increase in all crashes larger than .9% and any increase larger than 2.4% for fatal crashes. These estimates are at odds with the crash risks implied by the existing research. We confirm our results with three additional empirical approaches?we compare trends in cell phone ownership and crashes across areas of contiguous economic activity over time, investigate whether differences in urban versus rural crash rates mirror identified gaps in urban-rural cellular ownership, and finally estimate the impact of legislation banning driver cell phone use on crash rates. None of the additional analyses produces evidence for a positive link between cellular use and vehicle crashes.


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Comment by: Rohan2
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Evening Cell Phone Usage and Vehicle Accidents
I don't believe there should be any surprises here. How many vehicles are there on the road in the evenings versus the stop and go traffic that is encountered normal working ...
 
Driving Under the (Cellular) Influence: The Link Between Cell Phone Use and Vehicle Crashes
Comment by: Rick
Did your study compare the amount of driving that takes place during the off peak calling hours and peak calling hours. Intuitively, I would say that there are far fewer p...
 
no proof necessary that cell phone was not in use during accident
The driver that ran into my stopped car was on his cell phone when he hit me, but told the police that he was not. Cell phone use should be marked UNDETERMINED on the accident...
 
Figure 1 Text Description Inaccurate
Comment by: Kevin Gainer
If you look at Figure 1 of the paper, the "dramatic" decline in the death rate flattens VERY significantly right around the time that cell phone adoption rates begin...
 
Type of Accidents
Comment by: Richard DeShong
Maybe the type of accidents (factors involved) caused by cell phone use diminish so drastically towards the evening (such as considerably less traffic), that there is no notic...
 
Similar to bike helmet findings
Comment by: ZBicyclist
I’ve only read the abstract so far, not the full study, but I’m hearing echoes of the bicycle helmet research here. The early helmet studies — which, IIRC, used relative ri...
 
randomized prospective experiment required
Comment by: Garth
For some complex issues, it is impossible to form a clear answer on a question, because it is impractical or impossible to do a prospective, randomized study. Thus, the data ...
 
False Correlation
Comment by: JPW
False correlation. By what % does traffic decrease after 9pm? No direct link between increased cell phone use, traffic levels, and whether cell phone users were actually in ...
 
Cell phone users already bad drivers?
Comment by: Tim Vaughan
My theory on why it is not so easy to establish a link between accidents and cell phone use while driving: the people who use phones are already poor, distracted drivers, so p...
 
What about Road Rage?
Comment by: Yohann
Of greater interest would be a study of how much road rage is increased by cell phone yakking morons backing up traffic in the passing lane, I see that quite frequently. ...
 
cellular influence
Comment by: Ed Eovino
Do driving age cell phone users wait until 9PM to make calls? The ranks of pre driving age cell phone users has continued to increase. I often laugh to myself as I walk around...
 
Have you looked?
I wonder if anyone involved in this study has actually watched the drivers talking on their cell phones as they drift through stop signs and red lights, wander out of their la...
 
C'mon
Comment by: Terry
There is also less traffic after 9, less stress, people are in less of a hurry, etc. Lots of uncontrolled, possibly influential variables. All I have is anecdotal, but I ha...
 
Arbitrary parameter of 9 PM calls
If a person has a plan that allows 24/7 use of the cellphone to anyone within their network, there is no "peak time" for use. There is no link between the times and...
 
Another possible explanation
Comment by: Larry Tesler
In addition to the possibility that cell phone users are aware of the dangers and pay extra attention, it is possible that drivers near a cell phone user observe the behavior,...
 
Missing links
A significant problem seems to be the assumption that increased cell phone usage correlates with increased cell phone usage in cars. In particular, that increased cell phone u...
 
Re: previous post
Comment by: Brian
Regarding the "Cross Reference the Volume of Traffic" post, I believe that comment misunderstands the study. The point isn't that there is no increase in accidents ...
 
Cross Reference the Volume of Traffic with Accidents
The premise of the question seems very flawed. You assume that if cell phones are a significant factor in accidents that you'll see an increase in such accidents in peak hour...