{"id":28230,"date":"2014-10-13T10:15:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T14:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28230"},"modified":"2014-10-13T10:19:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T14:19:52","slug":"statistical-sleight-of-hand-on-the-dangers-of-texting-while-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/10\/13\/statistical-sleight-of-hand-on-the-dangers-of-texting-while-driving\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistical sleight-of-hand on the dangers of texting while driving"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip N. Cohen<\/a> casts a skeptical eye at the frequently cited statistic on the dangers of texting, especially to teenage drivers. It’s another “epidemic” of bad statistics and panic-mongering headlines:<\/p>\n

Recently, [author and journalist Matt] Richtel tweeted<\/a> a link to this old news article<\/a> that claims texting causes more fatal accidents for teenagers 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 previously noted<\/a>, that\u2019s not plausible.<\/p>\n

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

In fact, I suspect the 11-per-day meme comes from Mother Jones<\/em> (or whoever someone there got it from) doing the math wrong on that Newsday<\/em> number of 3,000 per year and calling it \u201cnearly a dozen<\/a>\u201d (3,000 is 8.2 per day). And if you Google around looking for this 11-per-day statistic, you find sites like textinganddrivingsafety.com<\/em>, 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 the source I used for the 2,823 number above. (The fact that he gets the name wrong suggests he got the statistic second-hand.) IIHS has an extensive page of facts<\/a> on distracted driving, which doesn\u2019t have any fact like this (they actually express skepticism about inflated claims of cell phone effects).<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I generally oppose scare-mongering manipulations of data that take advantage of common ignorance. The people selling mobile-phone panic don\u2019t dwell on the fact that the roads are getting safer and safer, and just let you go on assuming they\u2019re getting more and more dangerous. I reviewed all that here<\/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 isn\u2019t dangerous. I\u2019m sure it is. Cell phone bans may be a good idea, although the evidence that they save lives is mixed<\/a>. But the overall situation is surely more complicated than the TEXTING-WHILE-DRIVING EPIDEMIC suggests. The whole story doesn\u2019t seem right \u2014 how can phones be so dangerous, and growing more and more pervasive, 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 make-up; 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 the worst drivers already.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip N. Cohen casts a skeptical eye at the frequently cited statistic on the dangers of texting, especially to teenage drivers. It’s another “epidemic” of bad statistics and panic-mongering headlines: Recently, [author and journalist Matt] Richtel tweeted a link to this old news article that claims texting causes more fatal accidents for teenagers than alcohol. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,28,13],"tags":[111,993,39,547,290],"class_list":["post-28230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-media","category-usa","tag-cars","tag-gell-mannamnesia","tag-junkscience","tag-smartphones","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7lk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28233,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28230\/revisions\/28233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}