The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?

Right, but the other car may have left skid marks in his proper lane trying to stop. Or he tried to evade and left no skid marks.

The investigation will vary with the seriousness of the accident. Minor ding an a bumper won't get much attention and you could easily turn off the phone and toss it in the consul so it is not suspect. If it caused a death, chances are they'd be checking records from the carrier to see if a call was in progress.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski
Loading thread data ...

This is the 21st century. Cars have ABS today, they don't leave skid marks.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

I just heard that accidents have started going up, again. I don't know if this is an anomaly, though. If so, it could point a nasty finger at cell phone use.

Reply to
krw

Partly right. "Some" cars have ABS, but millions of older ones still don't. I still see skid marks on the road from older cars.

Better than marks on the road is the black box that many cars have. 'They can tell if brakes were applied.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Per The Real Bev:

Bad guess: I got a pilot's license.... and quit once it dawned on me that my own incompetence could now kill me.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

They do exist. I've personally rear ended a nice 325er once on 101 when I was living in the states.

Reply to
sndive

The information you are searching for is in the simple 'distracted driving' summary, in the census link you've posted.

RL

Reply to
legg

Looks like traveling at 45 mph is a real danger.

Some more information I saw today

formatting link
The National Safety Council reported this week that traffic deaths and serious injuries in the U.S. are on a pace to rise for the first time in nearly a decade. If the trend for the first six months of this year continues, the NSC says traffic fatalities in the nation will exceed

40,000 for the first time since 2007 and deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled also will increase.

This despite evermore crashworthy cars and high-tech electronic safety features.

The ?speed kills? coalition will blame the trend reversal on many states? recent moves to higher highway speed limits, but the real culprits, suggests NSC president Deborah Hershman to the Associated Press, are low fuel prices and ? get ready for it ? cellphone mania.

To be sure, Hershman says, Americans are on the road more than ever; miles driven in the U.S. increased for 15 consecutive months through May and set an all-time record for travel in the first five months of the year at 1.26 trillion miles, a record that stood since 2007. But, the

3.4% increase in miles traveled doesn?t square with the 14% jump in fatalities for the first half of this year.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has a prominent page on its website that says ?states continue to raise speed limits despite clear evidence that doing so leads to more deaths? ? an assertion that considerable data and many experts have suggested is specious. Instead, cellphone use likely has a more direct link to the new rise in traffic fatalities and injuries. An NSC study earlier this year indicated cellphone use is a factor in one quarter of all accidents.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

I didn't say the "offender" left skid marks.

Reply to
rickman

Sorry, my truck doesn't have ABS. BTW, when was the accident?

Reply to
rickman

I haven't read *all* of these posts, so hopefully I'm not repeating someone, but your linked report says this:

"Covers only accidents occurring on the road. Data are estimated. Year-to-year comparisons should be made with caution."

Records are public. Why do they have to estimate? Why didn't they just collect accident reports? They don't say. As at least one person noted, drunk driving is almost certainly down since 1990. Cars are better made, especially brakes. An increasing number of states ban handheld devices.

I've had two accidents in about the last 12 years. One was a man talking on a cellphone who veered into my lane. The other was a young man who plowed into my pickup, which was parked on a quiet, straight street. He was amazed he had hit me. Cellphone? Probably, but I'm not certain. He was in the car alone in late afternoon, so it wasn't "partying".

I've had many close calls. I can often tell when someone in front of me is on the phone because their driving doesn't correspond to conditions. Their speed and braking is erratic. Cellphones have also created a problem of very few people signaling. They simply don't have a hand free to do it!

So how do we figure in the increased defensive driving on the part of people who are paying attention? To a great extent, non-phoners are doing the work for phoners. I find driving to be more strenuous than it used to be. I have to constantly be vigilant for lane wanderers, non-signalers and general out-to-lunchers. Those people are all depending on others to be paying attention.

It would be interesting to also see figures for pedestrians. How many injuries walking into trees and cars while phoning? Last week I was heading down into the subway as a young woman strolled down the middle of the stairs, gabbing away, not holding the railing. I said excuse me, then "on your left". I was afraid she might step to the left as I passed and send one or both of us down the stairs. She was simply *not where she was*. Finally I raised my voice and said "wake up!". That worked. :) I listened to her indignant protests fade into the distance as I headed for the train. At least no one fell down the stairs. (Excuse me?! How dare you! blah, blah, blah...) And who knows, maybe she'll pay attention a bit more in the future. But the incident highlights another disturbing trend: People are increasingly uncomfortable simply being where they are. Many people simply don't expect to have to relate to the world around them. They're offended by it! It's not only a danger and a mild form of mental illness; it's also a growing social problem. I find people increasingly just walk into me on sidewalks. I asked a blind friend about his experience. Yes, more and more people are walking into him, as he walks city streets with a guide dog!

While we're at it, I'm curious how many accidents are caused by ridiculous flashing light overkill on emergency vehicles. Police and firefighters just can't seem to resist the childish thrill of adding yet another light. Police cars used to have a blue "bubble gum machine" on top. It worked fine. Now they have dozens of flashing lights in every color. The problem: It's impossible to tell where an emergency vehicle is going. Even if they use turn signals, there's no time to figure out which lights on this high-speed, psychedelic Christmas tree are signalling.

Reply to
Mayayana

Interesting points. My driving experience is that things are no different on the road now then they ever were in the past as far as the general competency and driving behavior of other drivers. Sure, sometimes you run into idiots but that's always been true. I see regional variations in how people drive... here in the west almost no one gets over to the left when people are coming down an on-ramp and will need to merge into traffic, it's every man for him/her self. Yet back east it's very common for the thru traffic to move left whenever there is someone coming up the on ramp.

I really think the regression to the mean applies and every time we try to make the Driver safer they just become more dangerous in some other fashion with the net result being the overall safety of THE DRIVER remains more or less the same year in and year out. Yet accident rates are lower..... I give credit for that more to highway and street design than to the driver. We have wider shoulders, wider lanes, more divided highways, safer guardrails, better signing, better sight distances, better geometric design, higher friction pavement surfaces, all things that make the roads safer but that the drivers don't even notice.

As far as emergency lighting, in the last 10 years it's actually taken a step backwards in my opinion. You are right that they have gone nutz with the lighting. The reason is LEDs. Before LEDs there was a practical limit on how many lights you could put on a car because more then a single light bar across the top would draw so much power (in addition to all the radios) that the battery would go dead while the cop was stopped. When LEDs dropped in price to where cost wasn't too big a concern (and cost is almost never a concern with PDs) they started loading up the police and emergency vehicles with every LED light they could find a place to bolt on. But something else happened too. Before LEDS, when it was usually a single light bar with half a dozen lights in it, all the lights in the bar were interconnected to a central controller which would flash them in a fixed and designated pattern. Researchers had even studied patterns and such looking for the best ones. Perhaps all the lights on the right half, then all the lights on the left half, then all the "even" lights, the all the "odd" lights, repeat or they might sequence from right to left to encourage you to stay left. So you saw an identifiable, and possibly even meaningful pattern as you approached the emergency vehicle.

With the LEDs they have mostly gone to each little module being it's own little world. Then they stick a dozen of them on teh vehicle, a couple at teh bottom of the rear window, a couple at the top, a few on the bumper, some on the rear view mirrors, plus they make the tail and reverse lights flash plus they have the top light bar going. None of those little modules are synchronized with any of the others so aside from the lights in the top light bar it's just a bunch of randomly flashing lights and so many of them that you can't focus on anything. Then they add the TAKE DOWN lights which are front and rear facing BRIGHT WHITE steady burning lights equivalent to headlight high beams. The purpose of the take down lights is to BLIND YOU. The idea is that you, the car either in front or behind the cop car, will have those take down lights shining right into your eyes so that you cannot clearly see the officer who stopped you, whereas he can see you. That way you won't pull your gun and shoot him because you can't see to aim at him. Lots of those cops turn them when they aren't needed which naturally blinds oncoming and upcoming traffic depending on the angle at which he parked his car.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

It's been less than a week and we're almost up to 500 messages. Should I start a "left foot braking thread"???

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

Per Mayayana:

The ones that bother me the most around here are the white strobes on top of the school buses and the white strobes in some traffic lights.

Geeze Louise!!! I *see* it.... it's yellow and as big as a house... but I need to see other things too and those damn strobe lights create some sort of involuntary attention response in me so other stuff tends to get missed as my attention keeps returning to the strobe.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Per Ashton Crusher:

I probably ride a bike more than 99% of the general population - and have been for sixty+ years.

I see obvious changes in driving behavior over the years.

The most obvious: people drive faster, signal less, run more red lights, and more people are obviously doing other things besides driving - mostly things that were not technologically available years past.

The red light thing has developed in the past few years since our area went over to ludicrously-long red lights plus red-in-all-directions for a seemingly very long time plus un-timed lights.

Most people running red lights used to be trying to slip through a stale yellow light. Now I seem them coming in at speed and not even slowing down.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

Per Ashton Crusher:

Start a "What is the proper way to come off an on-ramp and merge with traffic?" thread. Volume will be right up there with the infamous "Helmet" threads in cycling fora - and you will see strongly-held yet diametrically-opposed opinions on how to do it. Tribute, IMHO, to lack of requirements for driver's training.

Reply to
(PeteCresswell)

I can't say you are wrong, we may be seeing the same thing differently. But I will say that every generation complains about "kids today... yada yada yada" and believes the youth are going to hell in a hand basket. And they have been saying that since Socrates day.

?The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.? - Socrates

I view how most people talk about "other drivers" the same way. No matter who you talk to it's always the same, drivers are getting worse, politicians are getting worse, everything is getting worse. It seems that such a "it's getting worse" view is hard wired into most people as they age.

Reply to
Ashton Crusher

Glad I'm not the only one. The stupid things aren't on long enough for our eyes to focus on them, and the next one is in a different place. And what about that stupid chartreuse color that some cities are painting their fire engines? So it's NOT a natural color, that doesn't make it stand out any better. FIRE ENGINES ARE RED. PERIOD.

And have any Los Angeles residents noticed how few lights there are on the overhead freeway signs no? I suspect that it just costs too much to replace them. I can read the signs at a reasonable distance if I have my lights on high, but that seems really rude -- in spite of the fact that perhaps 1/4 of the drivers don't understand that their high beams are to be used only OCCASIONALLY.

And what about those banks of bright lights they use when working on the freeways at night? They ALWAYS point them directly into oncoming traffic. It's like they WANT to cause crashes.

And another thing...

Reply to
The Real Bev

I've always been taught to pull over and get out of the way. So, I really don't *care* which way the vehicle is headed until he's long past my location! :>

Apparently, the lights are necessary because so many drivers "zone out" (ear buds, chatting on phone, etc.) and cars are much quieter (here, the windows tend to be *up* all year round for air conditioning).

Also, I think emergency vehicles are less prone to using

*audible* alarms than they were in the past. Often, the only way I have of knowing that an emergency vehicle is "nearby" is to watch the strobe light atop each traffic light (intersection): if it's flashing, then it "sees" an emergency vehicle on one of the connecting streets. At that point, I start examining my mirrors, looking down side streets, etc.: "When will I have to get out of the way?"
Reply to
Don Y

We have ordinances to avoid unnecessary "light pollution" (lots of astronomy done here). So, street lights are scarce, signs aren't gratuitously illuminated, etc. Even the lights for our back yard (bright as day, if we so choose) don't extend beyond the property line, aren't visible in neighbors' homes, etc.

When we're outside after nightfall, the sky is *deep* black -- punctuated with countless stars. It makes meteor showers spectacular events!

Reply to
Don Y

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.