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Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?

Started by	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
First post	2026-09-18 00:28 +0300
Last post	2026-10-04 10:55 +1300
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#155990 — Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-18 00:28 +0300
Subject	Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
Message-ID	<118hm1r$3s0$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>

Why do people claim cellphone use increased the accident rate in the USA?

In a recent thread c.m.a/m.p.m.i on various carplay, androidauto, android
automotive and screen mirroring (sonicboom) solutions, an offshoot tangent
occurred when we theorized why factories don't just make automotive dash
systems a phone mirror so that a familiar interface is always on the dash.

Like this:
 <https://i.postimg.cc/k5gv0yw8/vysor34.jpg> Apple iOS & Android mirroring

Some brought up technical issues, but really, there are none, while others
brought up safety issues, and for that, I'm sure there are legal issues.

But, are those legal issues valid?

Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
A: ?

Note we're restricting this to the USA only because accurate data has been
compiled by the USA government on accident rates over the past 100 years.

Note 1: Accident propaganda from the following will be deeply analyzed:
      a. Law firms
      b. Insurance companies
      c. Law enforcement claims & politician claims 

Note 2: Accident *rate* is what matters, not any given number of accidents,
      over the period where cellphone ownership went from 0% to ~100%

Note 3: Fatalities and injuries, while deeply emotional, do not count
      (because they are a second-order effect *after* the accident).

Note 4: Nobody claims "distracted driving" doesn't cause a large number
       of accidents but distractions existed prior to cell phones and 
       distractions exist after cell phone became predominate, and yet, 
       in all the accurate accident-rate statistics, the rate simply
       slowly trended downward year after year, before, during & after.

Note 5: Paradoxically, cellphone hands-free laws were enacted in most     
       states but there is absolutely no correlation with accident rates 
       in those states, before, during or after the laws went into force.

There was no blip whatsoever, in USA accident rate (for which accurate
statistics have been kept for over a century) which tells the true story.

Given that, the question becomes... 
Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
A: ?
-- 
Only after you compare the claims versus the data do you know the answer.

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#155993

From	AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org>
Date	2026-09-17 17:26 -0500
Message-ID	<118hpdn$ngg6$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#155990

On 9/17/2026 4:28 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:
> Why do people claim cellphone use increased the accident rate in the USA?
> 
> In a recent thread c.m.a/m.p.m.i on various carplay, androidauto, android
> automotive and screen mirroring (sonicboom) solutions, an offshoot tangent
> occurred when we theorized why factories don't just make automotive dash
> systems a phone mirror so that a familiar interface is always on the dash.
> 
> Like this:
>   <https://i.postimg.cc/k5gv0yw8/vysor34.jpg> Apple iOS & Android mirroring
> 
> Some brought up technical issues, but really, there are none, while others
> brought up safety issues, and for that, I'm sure there are legal issues.
> 
> But, are those legal issues valid?
> 
> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
> A: ?
> 
> Note we're restricting this to the USA only because accurate data has been
> compiled by the USA government on accident rates over the past 100 years.
> 
> Note 1: Accident propaganda from the following will be deeply analyzed:
>        a. Law firms
>        b. Insurance companies
>        c. Law enforcement claims & politician claims
> 
> Note 2: Accident *rate* is what matters, not any given number of accidents,
>        over the period where cellphone ownership went from 0% to ~100%
> 
> Note 3: Fatalities and injuries, while deeply emotional, do not count
>        (because they are a second-order effect *after* the accident).
> 
> Note 4: Nobody claims "distracted driving" doesn't cause a large number
>         of accidents but distractions existed prior to cell phones and
>         distractions exist after cell phone became predominate, and yet,
>         in all the accurate accident-rate statistics, the rate simply
>         slowly trended downward year after year, before, during & after.
> 
> Note 5: Paradoxically, cellphone hands-free laws were enacted in most
>         states but there is absolutely no correlation with accident rates
>         in those states, before, during or after the laws went into force.
> 
> There was no blip whatsoever, in USA accident rate (for which accurate
> statistics have been kept for over a century) which tells the true story.
> 
> Given that, the question becomes...
> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
> A: ?

There are many post-crash reports of semi and auto drivers 
watching movies or porn or texting furiously as they 
massacre innocents.

I agree that if people merely used the audio (as police and 
truckers do with radios) there would not be a problem.

https://www.lifeasatrucker.com/trucker-caught-watching-porn-before-crash-that-killed-father-a-tragic-lesson-on-distraction.html

https://discover.swns.com/2025/09/shocking-dashcam-captures-woman-texting-at-wheel-before-crash/

-- 
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

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#156025

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-19 02:41 +0300
Message-ID	<118ki6q$1lni$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#155993

AMuzi wrote:
> On 9/17/2026 4:28 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:
>> Why do people claim cellphone use increased the accident rate in the USA?
>> 
>> In a recent thread c.m.a/m.p.m.i on various carplay, androidauto, android
>> automotive and screen mirroring (sonicboom) solutions, an offshoot tangent
>> occurred when we theorized why factories don't just make automotive dash
>> systems a phone mirror so that a familiar interface is always on the dash.
>> 
>> Like this:
>>   <https://i.postimg.cc/k5gv0yw8/vysor34.jpg> Apple iOS & Android mirroring
>> 
>> Some brought up technical issues, but really, there are none, while others
>> brought up safety issues, and for that, I'm sure there are legal issues.
>> 
>> But, are those legal issues valid?
>> 
>> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
>> A: ?
>> 
>> Note we're restricting this to the USA only because accurate data has been
>> compiled by the USA government on accident rates over the past 100 years.
>> 
>> Note 1: Accident propaganda from the following will be deeply analyzed:
>>        a. Law firms
>>        b. Insurance companies
>>        c. Law enforcement claims & politician claims
>> 
>> Note 2: Accident *rate* is what matters, not any given number of accidents,
>>        over the period where cellphone ownership went from 0% to ~100%
>> 
>> Note 3: Fatalities and injuries, while deeply emotional, do not count
>>        (because they are a second-order effect *after* the accident).
>> 
>> Note 4: Nobody claims "distracted driving" doesn't cause a large number
>>         of accidents but distractions existed prior to cell phones and
>>         distractions exist after cell phone became predominate, and yet,
>>         in all the accurate accident-rate statistics, the rate simply
>>         slowly trended downward year after year, before, during & after.
>> 
>> Note 5: Paradoxically, cellphone hands-free laws were enacted in most
>>         states but there is absolutely no correlation with accident rates
>>         in those states, before, during or after the laws went into force.
>> 
>> There was no blip whatsoever, in USA accident rate (for which accurate
>> statistics have been kept for over a century) which tells the true story.
>> 
>> Given that, the question becomes...
>> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
>> A: ?
> 
> There are many post-crash reports of semi and auto drivers 
> watching movies or porn or texting furiously as they 
> massacre innocents.
> 
> I agree that if people merely used the audio (as police and 
> truckers do with radios) there would not be a problem.
> 
> https://www.lifeasatrucker.com/trucker-caught-watching-porn-before-crash-that-killed-father-a-tragic-lesson-on-distraction.html
> 
> https://discover.swns.com/2025/09/shocking-dashcam-captures-woman-texting-at-wheel-before-crash/

Assuming no other factor was involved to cancel the arguments that people
are making, if their hypothesis is "cell phones cause accidents," then
the accident rate should have increased substantially at some point
during the introduction and widespread adoption of cell phones, right?

What's intuitively obvious is that most accidents are NOT caused by
cell phones. Speed, alcohol, weather, road conditions, vehicle
conditions, driver experience, etc. are all potential causes.

Even so, given that we know approximately when cell phones were
introduced into the USA, those who argue that cell phones meaningfully
increased the USA accident rate have merely to show us valid USA
statistics which support that claim.

Here are the national numbers.

             U.S. CELL PHONES, CRASHES, MILES & CRASH RATE
                              1988-2024

Crash rate = NHTSA estimated police-reported crashes / FHWA VMT
             x 100 million.

Year   Wireless       Police-reported    VMT       Crashes/
       connections*   crashes             billion   100M VMT
----------------------------------------------------------------
1988     2.07 M        6,886,800          2,026       339.9
1989     3.51 M        6,652,815          2,096       317.4
1990     5.28 M        6,471,202          2,144       301.8
1991     7.56 M        6,117,359          2,172       281.6
1992    11.03 M        6,000,310          2,247       267.0
1993    16.01 M        6,105,915          2,296       265.9
1994    24.13 M        6,495,988          2,358       275.5
1995    33.79 M        6,699,415          2,423       276.5
1996    44.04 M        6,769,583          2,500       270.8
1997    55.31 M        6,624,149          2,568       257.9
1998    69.21 M        6,334,573          2,645       239.5
1999    86.05 M        6,279,036          2,707       232.0
2000   109.48 M        6,393,624          2,764       231.3
2001   128.37 M        6,322,963          2,813       224.8
2002   140.77 M        6,315,708          2,874       219.8
2003   158.72 M        6,327,955          2,909       217.5
2004   182.14 M        6,181,027          2,982       207.3
2005   207.90 M        6,159,350          3,009       204.7
2006   233.04 M        5,973,213          3,034       196.9
2007   255.40 M        6,024,008          3,049       197.6
2008   270.33 M        5,810,846          2,993       194.1
2009   285.65 M        5,505,180          2,976       185.0
2010   296.29 M        5,419,445          2,985       181.6

2011   315.96 M        5,337,829          2,965       180.0
2012   326.48 M        5,615,045          2,969       189.1
2013   335.65 M        5,686,891          2,988       190.3
2014   355.45 M        6,064,284          3,040       199.5
2015   377.92 M        6,296,134          3,110       202.4

2016     ~387 M        6,821,129          3,174       214.9
2017     ~392 M        6,452,598          3,225       200.1
2018     ~413 M        6,734,681          3,255       206.9
2019     ~435 M        6,756,084          3,276       206.2
2020     ~461 M        5,251,006          2,917       180.0
2021     ~491 M        6,103,213          3,154       193.5
2022     ~515 M        5,930,697          3,197       185.5
2023     ~558 M        6,138,474          3,247       189.0
2024        --         6,180,241          3,294       187.6


* Wireless figures are connections/subscriptions, NOT unique people.
  A person can have multiple connections, so these numbers should not
  be interpreted as "percentage of Americans who own a phone."

The historical CTIA series gives the exact annual wireless connection
numbers for the earlier period. For example:

  1990 =  5,283,055
  2000 =109,476,000 (approximately)
  2010 =296,293,000 (approximately)
  2015 =377,921,241

CTIA:
<https://api.ctia.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/ctia_survey_ye_2015_graphics.pdf>

NHTSA's national crash series begins in 1988. It is based on the
National Automotive Sampling System's General Estimates System (GES),
which estimated the number of police-reported crashes in the USA.

NHTSA:
<https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813375>

For the later years, NHTSA uses the Crash Report Sampling System
(CRSS).

NHTSA:
<https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813720>

FHWA provides the national vehicle-miles-traveled series.

FHWA:
<https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/our_nations_highways_2026/travel.cfm>


There is a methodological break between GES and CRSS in 2016. NHTSA
states that the estimates from the two systems are not directly
comparable because their sampling designs differ.

Therefore, don't interpret the change from 2015 to 2016 as necessarily
representing a real-world change in crashes.

The much cleaner comparison is entirely within the GES period:

                    WIRELESS CONNECTIONS

1990       5.3 million
2000     109.5 million
2010     296.3 million


                    CRASHES / 100M VMT

1990       301.8
2000       231.3
2010       181.6


So from 1990 to 2010, wireless connections increased approximately
56-fold.

During that same period, the national police-reported crash rate
declined from approximately 302 crashes per 100 million vehicle-miles
to approximately 182.

That's a decline of about 40%.

This does NOT prove that cell phones never cause individual accidents.
Obviously, a driver can be distracted by a cell phone and crash.

It does, however, create a very simple empirical question for anyone
claiming that cell phones caused a substantial increase in the overall
U.S. accident rate:

Where is the corresponding increase in the NATIONAL ACCIDENT RATE?

The phones went from essentially nothing to hundreds of millions of
connections.

The miles driven went up.

And the national crash rate, during the clean 1990-2010 GES period,
went DOWN substantially.

Think about that fact.

--
Most people believe whatever the propaganda is that is fed to them

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#155994

From	Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid>
Date	2026-09-18 01:05 +0100
Message-ID	<118hv7p$ol93$4@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#155990

On 2026-09-17, Maria Sophia wrote:

> Why do people claim cellphone use increased the accident rate in the USA?
>
> In a recent thread c.m.a/m.p.m.i on various carplay, androidauto, android
> automotive and screen mirroring (sonicboom) solutions, an offshoot tangent
> occurred when we theorized why factories don't just make automotive dash
> systems a phone mirror so that a familiar interface is always on the dash.
>
> Like this:
>  <https://i.postimg.cc/k5gv0yw8/vysor34.jpg> Apple iOS & Android mirroring
>
> Some brought up technical issues, but really, there are none, while others
> brought up safety issues, and for that, I'm sure there are legal issues.
>
> But, are those legal issues valid?
>
> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
> A: ?
>
> Note we're restricting this to the USA only because accurate data has been
> compiled by the USA government on accident rates over the past 100 years.
>
> Note 1: Accident propaganda from the following will be deeply analyzed:
>       a. Law firms
>       b. Insurance companies
>       c. Law enforcement claims & politician claims 
>
> Note 2: Accident *rate* is what matters, not any given number of accidents,
>       over the period where cellphone ownership went from 0% to ~100%
>
> Note 3: Fatalities and injuries, while deeply emotional, do not count
>       (because they are a second-order effect *after* the accident).
>
> Note 4: Nobody claims "distracted driving" doesn't cause a large number
>        of accidents but distractions existed prior to cell phones and 
>        distractions exist after cell phone became predominate, and yet, 
>        in all the accurate accident-rate statistics, the rate simply
>        slowly trended downward year after year, before, during & after.
>
> Note 5: Paradoxically, cellphone hands-free laws were enacted in most     
>        states but there is absolutely no correlation with accident rates 
>        in those states, before, during or after the laws went into force.
>
> There was no blip whatsoever, in USA accident rate (for which accurate
> statistics have been kept for over a century) which tells the true story.
>
> Given that, the question becomes... 
> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
> A: ?

It is so unrealistic that it'd not have an impact, perhaps especially
phones without a consistent and tactile interfaces, that it really
becomes more plausible that either the data are incorrect or that the
laws simply aren't being effectively enforced.

Hands-free laws are a no-brainer, reaction times are something well
documented and easy to factor in. If your hands aren't available for
driving, there's no way reaction times and outcomes are going to be the
same.

-- 
Nuno Silva

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#155996

From	badgolferman <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com>
Date	2026-09-18 00:43 +0000
Message-ID	<118i1fp$co61$1@solani.org>
In reply to	#155990

Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> wrote:
> Why do people claim cellphone use increased the accident rate in the USA?
> 
> In a recent thread c.m.a/m.p.m.i on various carplay, androidauto, android
> automotive and screen mirroring (sonicboom) solutions, an offshoot tangent
> occurred when we theorized why factories don't just make automotive dash
> systems a phone mirror so that a familiar interface is always on the dash.
> 
> Like this:
>  <https://i.postimg.cc/k5gv0yw8/vysor34.jpg> Apple iOS & Android mirroring
> 
> Some brought up technical issues, but really, there are none, while others
> brought up safety issues, and for that, I'm sure there are legal issues.
> 
> But, are those legal issues valid?
> 
> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
> A: ?
> 
> Note we're restricting this to the USA only because accurate data has been
> compiled by the USA government on accident rates over the past 100 years.
> 
> Note 1: Accident propaganda from the following will be deeply analyzed:
>       a. Law firms
>       b. Insurance companies
>       c. Law enforcement claims & politician claims 
> 
> Note 2: Accident *rate* is what matters, not any given number of accidents,
>       over the period where cellphone ownership went from 0% to ~100%
> 
> Note 3: Fatalities and injuries, while deeply emotional, do not count
>       (because they are a second-order effect *after* the accident).
> 
> Note 4: Nobody claims "distracted driving" doesn't cause a large number
>        of accidents but distractions existed prior to cell phones and 
>        distractions exist after cell phone became predominate, and yet, 
>        in all the accurate accident-rate statistics, the rate simply
>        slowly trended downward year after year, before, during & after.
> 
> Note 5: Paradoxically, cellphone hands-free laws were enacted in most     
>        states but there is absolutely no correlation with accident rates 
>        in those states, before, during or after the laws went into force.
> 
> There was no blip whatsoever, in USA accident rate (for which accurate
> statistics have been kept for over a century) which tells the true story.
> 
> Given that, the question becomes... 
> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
> A: ?

You’ve brought this topic up before. 

As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
consistent with the raw data. 

I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.

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#155998

From	Nick Charles <none@none.none>
Date	2026-09-18 02:34 +0000
Message-ID	<CbKdnXIqMI3OPjH3nZ2dnZfqnPidnZ2d@supernews.com>
In reply to	#155996

On Sep 17, 2026 at 8:43:37 PM EDT, "badgolferman"
<REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:

> Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> wrote:
>> Why do people claim cellphone use increased the accident rate in the USA?
>> 
>> In a recent thread c.m.a/m.p.m.i on various carplay, androidauto, android
>> automotive and screen mirroring (sonicboom) solutions, an offshoot tangent
>> occurred when we theorized why factories don't just make automotive dash
>> systems a phone mirror so that a familiar interface is always on the dash.
>> 
>> Like this:
>>  <https://i.postimg.cc/k5gv0yw8/vysor34.jpg> Apple iOS & Android mirroring
>> 
>> Some brought up technical issues, but really, there are none, while others
>> brought up safety issues, and for that, I'm sure there are legal issues.
>> 
>> But, are those legal issues valid?
>> 
>> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
>> A: ?
>> 
>> Note we're restricting this to the USA only because accurate data has been
>> compiled by the USA government on accident rates over the past 100 years.
>> 
>> Note 1: Accident propaganda from the following will be deeply analyzed:
>>       a. Law firms
>>       b. Insurance companies
>>       c. Law enforcement claims & politician claims
>> 
>> Note 2: Accident *rate* is what matters, not any given number of accidents,
>>       over the period where cellphone ownership went from 0% to ~100%
>> 
>> Note 3: Fatalities and injuries, while deeply emotional, do not count
>>       (because they are a second-order effect *after* the accident).
>> 
>> Note 4: Nobody claims "distracted driving" doesn't cause a large number
>>        of accidents but distractions existed prior to cell phones and
>>        distractions exist after cell phone became predominate, and yet,
>>        in all the accurate accident-rate statistics, the rate simply
>>        slowly trended downward year after year, before, during & after.
>> 
>> Note 5: Paradoxically, cellphone hands-free laws were enacted in most
>>        states but there is absolutely no correlation with accident rates
>>        in those states, before, during or after the laws went into force.
>> 
>> There was no blip whatsoever, in USA accident rate (for which accurate
>> statistics have been kept for over a century) which tells the true story.
>> 
>> Given that, the question becomes...
>> Q: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
>> A: ?
> 
> You’ve brought this topic up before.
> 
> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
> don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
> consistent with the raw data.
> 
> I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.

Cell phones are absolutely causing more accidents every day. But that does not
necessarily mean "more total accidents than before". 

In the past, "distracted driving" was people changing radio stations and/or
tapes in the tape deck, etc.  Those days are long gone.  Not to mention women
putting on makeup and looking at themselves in mirrors.

Today, "distracted driving" is texting/talking on the phone/changing your
Spotify list/changing your iTunes list/watching TV/etc.  Not to mention women
are now looking at themselves in their phone front camera while putting on
makeup. 

So phones/iPads/whatever are definitely causing many/most/take your pick
accidents today. But the overall accident totals could be the same, or
statiscally not different. 

So the statement "phones are causing more accidents every day" is perfectly
valid. Extrapolating that into "Phones have increased the accident rate" is
not valid or logical. Could be the same number of "distracted driving"
accidents. Just a different cause for the distraction.

OTOH, the possibility that Arlen is wrong/full of shit/lying cannot be
ignored. Perhaps the accident rate HAS risen.  After all, he is wrong/full of
shit/lying about EVERY FUCKING TOPIC he raises here.

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#156006

From	Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid>
Date	2026-09-18 11:12 +0100
Message-ID	<118j2r0$156ki$2@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#155998

On 2026-09-18, Nick Charles wrote:

> On Sep 17, 2026 at 8:43:37 PM EDT, "badgolferman"
> <REMOVETHISbadgolferman@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
>> You’ve brought this topic up before.
>> 
>> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
>> don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
>> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
>> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
>> consistent with the raw data.
>> 
>> I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
>
> Cell phones are absolutely causing more accidents every day. But that does not
> necessarily mean "more total accidents than before". 

Not to mention it can be making accidents worse, as in, perhaps there'd
still be an accident, but with less or lighter victims with the
decreased reaction time of not being distracted. So the number of
accidents could vary less depending on how it's being categorized.

> OTOH, the possibility that Arlen is wrong/full of shit/lying cannot be
> ignored. Perhaps the accident rate HAS risen.  After all, he is wrong/full of
> shit/lying about EVERY FUCKING TOPIC he raises here.

I can't say I'm enthusiastic about their participation, but I'll try to
discuss the topic at hand productively first.

-- 
Nuno Silva

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#156026

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-19 02:56 +0300
Message-ID	<118kj3g$1k8h$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#155998

Nick Charles wrote:
>> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
>> don�t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
>> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
>> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
>> consistent with the raw data.
>> 
>> I think it�s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
> 
> Cell phones are absolutely causing more accidents every day. But that does not
> necessarily mean "more total accidents than before". 
> 
> In the past, "distracted driving" was people changing radio stations and/or
> tapes in the tape deck, etc.  Those days are long gone.  Not to mention women
> putting on makeup and looking at themselves in mirrors.
> 
> Today, "distracted driving" is texting/talking on the phone/changing your
> Spotify list/changing your iTunes list/watching TV/etc.  Not to mention women
> are now looking at themselves in their phone front camera while putting on
> makeup. 
> 
> So phones/iPads/whatever are definitely causing many/most/take your pick
> accidents today. But the overall accident totals could be the same, or
> statiscally not different. 
> 
> So the statement "phones are causing more accidents every day" is perfectly
> valid. Extrapolating that into "Phones have increased the accident rate" is
> not valid or logical. Could be the same number of "distracted driving"
> accidents. Just a different cause for the distraction.

Hi Nick,

If phones are causing a great number of accidents, we would expect it 
to show up in the USA statistics on the number of accidents per mile
during the period just before, during & after the cellphone skyrocketing.
 1. Pre-cellular baseline 1937-1982 No commercial US cellular service
 2. Cellular introduced	1983 First commercial cellular service began
 3. Early adoption 1984-1989 Cell phones existed but were still rare
 4. Rapid adoption 1990-1999 Cellular subscriptions exploded
 5. Mass adoption 2000-2004 >100 million U.S. wireless connections
 6. Essentially ubiquitous 2005-2010 ~208M -> 296M wireless connections
 7. Smartphone era 2011-present	Smartphones become dominant

Yet, the accident rate went down, just as it had been trending for 
decades, and still trends downward, which needs to be explained if 
someone is claiming that skyrocketing cell phone ownership caused
concomitant skyrocketing cellphone related accidents which wouldn't have
been caused otherwise, right? 

But we just showed the rates went down in the data for the United
States which has been compiled very accurately over decades in use.

Bear in mind there is one important limitation in that the NHTSA's
nationally estimated total-crash series begins in 1988. 

For 1983-1987, we have federal national traffic data, but not the same 
GES total-crash series, so, for sure, we need to understand the data.

What we can put together cleanly is this:

1983-2010: NATIONAL U.S. PICTURE

Period                 Year  Wireless  Crashes     VMT      Rate
                             connections           billion   /100M
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cellular introduced    1983  ~0.2 M    --          1,653    --
Early adoption         1984  ~0.3 M    --          1,720    --
Early adoption         1985   0.34 M   --          1,775    --
Early adoption         1986  ~0.68 M   --          1,835    --
Early adoption         1987  ~1.2 M    --          1,921    --
Early adoption         1988   2.07 M   6,886,800   2,026    339.9
Early adoption         1989   3.51 M   6,652,815   2,096    317.4
Rapid adoption         1990   5.28 M   6,471,202   2,144    301.8
                        1991   7.56 M   6,117,359   2,172    281.6
                        1992  11.03 M   6,000,310   2,247    267.0
                        1993  16.01 M   6,105,915   2,296    265.9
                        1994  24.13 M   6,495,988   2,358    275.5
                        1995  33.79 M   6,699,415   2,423    276.5
                        1996  44.04 M   6,769,583   2,484    272.6
                        1997  55.31 M   6,624,149   2,578    257.0
                        1998  69.21 M   6,334,573   2,632    240.7
                        1999  86.05 M   6,279,036   2,691    233.3
Mass adoption          2000 109.5 M    6,393,624   2,767    231.0
                        2001 128.4 M    6,322,963  ~2,801    225.7
                        2002 140.8 M    6,315,708  ~2,874    219.8
                        2003 158.7 M    6,327,955  ~2,910    217.5
                        2004 182.1 M    6,181,027  ~2,982    207.3
Essentially ubiquitous  2005 207.9 M    6,159,350  ~3,009    204.7
                        2006 233.0 M    5,973,213  ~3,034    196.9
                        2007 255.4 M    6,024,008  ~3,049    197.6
                        2008 270.3 M    5,810,846  ~2,993    194.1
                        2009 285.7 M    5,505,180  ~2,976    185.0
Essentially ubiquitous  2010 296.3 M    5,419,445  ~2,985    181.6

The VMT figures for 1983-2000 are available directly from the
Federal Highway Administration's historical series.
FHWA:
<https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/line9.htm>

The national crash estimates beginning in 1988 come from NHTSA's
GES series. The 1988 estimate is 6,886,800 crashes. The 2000
estimate is 6,393,624.

NHTSA:
<https://www.nhtsa.gov/document/economic-impact-motor-vehicle-crashes-2000>

The wireless numbers for the early-adoption period and 1990s
come from the historical CTIA series.

Notice that this is the really important part when analyzing the dataset.

If we start the clean comparison at 1988, the progression is:

1988
  2.1 million wireless connections
  340 crashes / 100M VMT
1990
  5.3 million
  302 crashes / 100M VMT
2000
  109.5 million
  231 crashes / 100M VMT
2005
  207.9 million
  205 crashes / 100M VMT
2010
  296.3 million
  182 crashes / 100M VMT

So during the period when wireless connections went from roughly
  2 million --> 296 million
the national police-reported crash rate went from approximately
  340 --> 182 crashes per 100 million miles.
That's about a 46% decline in the crash rate.

And that's not using fatalities as a proxy. These are total
estimated police-reported crashes where you can't have a

From 1983-1987 is a bit harder because the dataset changed..

We have excellent national VMT:
  1983: 1.653 trillion miles
  1984: 1.720 trillion
  1985: 1.775 trillion
  1986: 1.835 trillion
  1987: 1.921 trillion
FHWA:
<https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/line6.htm>

But for those years, it's harder to get comparative crash reports.

Luckily, 1988 is still extremely early in cellular adoption 
where only about 2 million U.S. wireless connections existed, so 
we can then follow the same national crash series through the 
explosion to hundreds of millions of connections.

  1. 1937-1982 -- Pre-cellular
     Historical baseline/context.
  2. 1983 -- Cellular introduced
     First commercial U.S. cellular service.
  3. 1984-1989 -- Early adoption
     Still extremely few subscribers.
  4. 1990-1999 -- Rapid adoption
     ~5M --> ~86M connections.
  5. 2000-2004 -- Mass adoption
     ~109M --> ~182M connections.
  6. 2005-2010 -- Essentially ubiquitous
     ~208M --> ~296M connections.
  7. 2011-present -- Smartphone era.

For the actual crash-rate calculation, however, we have to 
start around 1988, because that's where the nationally
estimated NHTSA total-crash series begins.

  1988:   2.1M phones / 340 crashes per 100M miles
  1990:   5.3M / 302 crashes per 100M miles
  2000: 109.5M / 231 crashes per 100M miles
  2010: 296.3M / 182 crashes per 100M miles

That is the cleanest first-order comparison of cellular adoption
versus total crash rate that the national data give us, where
the trend is clearly going down, not up.

So the hypothesis that cellphone ownership rates skyrocketing
caused accident rates to skyrocket, is busted, don't you think?
-- 
When people are given the real facts, their eyes start to glaze over.

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#155999

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-18 05:52 +0300
Message-ID	<118i927$2atv$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#155996

badgolferman wrote:
> You�ve brought this topic up before. 
> 
> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
> don�t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
> consistent with the raw data. 
> 
> I think it�s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.

Hi badgolferman,

You are well aware that I'm trained as a scientist and as an engineer.
The first thing we learn in science is to be driven empirically by data.

Unfortunately, most people are not data driven. 
They're driven by religion or emotion. 

They make all their "scientific" decisions based on scary anecdotes.
The news writes about the one sensationalist accident.
Not the 100 boring accidents that occurred that very same day.

But most people believe only that sensationalistic accidents occur.
Not boring accidents.

Yet, "The plural of anecdote is not data" is an expression in science.

You are aware that for the past 60 years of driving, when I pull up to 
the Costco pump, I ask the guy across from me what the difference is 
between the premium and the regular. I got the right answer twice.

If that's once a month, for 60 years, I have 718 wrong answers out of 
720 queries, or about 99.72% of the people I asked simply were wrong.

Why?
They're convinced their Honda Civic runs "better" and "with more power" 
on premium, or that using premium "once a month" cleans out the engine.

Why do they think something that absurd? 
Because it "sounds plausible" to them.

Same with car accidents, which are NOT cherry picked when we look at 
the statistics since the 1920s compiled by the US for every state.

I get it that everyone reads the news, where "dog bites car" gets 
more hits than "car hits dog", but anecdotal evidence is not science.

Anecdotal evidence is emotional. 
Just like "religious evidence" is emotional. 

But it's not science.

The Catholic Church has more than 1,000 formally canonized saints, and 
the canonization process has officially recognized hundreds of alleged 
miracles associated with them. Hundreds of individual miracle claims 
do not become scientific evidence merely because there are hundreds 
of them. 

I get it people think emotionally. 
Not scientifically.

To them, if the current propaganda is cell phones cause accidents, 
every accident they can find that has a cell phone is validation.

The same is true of thousands of people saying they saw a distracted 
driver with a cell phone in their hand (where, I guess the corollary, 
I suppose, is that these same people must never have seen a distracted
driver before cell phones existed, i.e., for about a hundred years.

Weak minds will parrot propaganda every time.
I don't even need to prove that, I hope.

But propaganda is not science.

This article discusses why people can give disproportionate weight 
to personal experiences and anecdotes even when larger, systematically 
collected datasets point in another direction.
 *How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results*
 <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results/>
  "thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not"

The question being asked here is about science. Facts. Good data.
Real data. And, to my knowledge, only the USA has compiled that data.

Accident rate = number of motor-vehicle accidents � vehicle miles driven 
Usually expressed as accidents per 1 million vehicle-miles traveled
or equivalently per 100 million VMT (vehicle miles traveled).

Given that's the ONLY metric that matters in any first-order discussion,
luckily the federal government explicitly recognizes number of accidents
per 100 million VMT as a highway safety performance measure.

Unfortunately, our first data-collection issue is Census has historical 
motor-vehicle accident counts, while FHWA has the historical VMT series. 

Since this is getting long, let's take that up separately, since we
are not asking for anecdotal data, nor cherry-picked data, but for
the accidents divided by miles driven, either of or both of which 
are accurate federal statistics which have been kept since the 1920s.
-- 
Most people substitute religious thinking when they can't handle science.

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#156008

From	AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org>
Date	2026-09-18 07:41 -0500
Message-ID	<118jbij$19gmg$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#155999

On 9/17/2026 9:52 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:
> badgolferman wrote:
>> You�ve brought this topic up before.
>>
>> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
>> don�t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
>> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
>> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
>> consistent with the raw data.
>>
>> I think it�s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
> 
> Hi badgolferman,
> 
> You are well aware that I'm trained as a scientist and as an engineer.
> The first thing we learn in science is to be driven empirically by data.
> 
> Unfortunately, most people are not data driven.
> They're driven by religion or emotion.
> 
> They make all their "scientific" decisions based on scary anecdotes.
> The news writes about the one sensationalist accident.
> Not the 100 boring accidents that occurred that very same day.
> 
> But most people believe only that sensationalistic accidents occur.
> Not boring accidents.
> 
> Yet, "The plural of anecdote is not data" is an expression in science.
> 
> You are aware that for the past 60 years of driving, when I pull up to
> the Costco pump, I ask the guy across from me what the difference is
> between the premium and the regular. I got the right answer twice.
> 
> If that's once a month, for 60 years, I have 718 wrong answers out of
> 720 queries, or about 99.72% of the people I asked simply were wrong.
> 
> Why?
> They're convinced their Honda Civic runs "better" and "with more power"
> on premium, or that using premium "once a month" cleans out the engine.
> 
> Why do they think something that absurd?
> Because it "sounds plausible" to them.
> 
> Same with car accidents, which are NOT cherry picked when we look at
> the statistics since the 1920s compiled by the US for every state.
> 
> I get it that everyone reads the news, where "dog bites car" gets
> more hits than "car hits dog", but anecdotal evidence is not science.
> 
> Anecdotal evidence is emotional.
> Just like "religious evidence" is emotional.
> 
> But it's not science.
> 
> The Catholic Church has more than 1,000 formally canonized saints, and
> the canonization process has officially recognized hundreds of alleged
> miracles associated with them. Hundreds of individual miracle claims
> do not become scientific evidence merely because there are hundreds
> of them.
> 
> I get it people think emotionally.
> Not scientifically.
> 
> To them, if the current propaganda is cell phones cause accidents,
> every accident they can find that has a cell phone is validation.
> 
> The same is true of thousands of people saying they saw a distracted
> driver with a cell phone in their hand (where, I guess the corollary,
> I suppose, is that these same people must never have seen a distracted
> driver before cell phones existed, i.e., for about a hundred years.
> 
> Weak minds will parrot propaganda every time.
> I don't even need to prove that, I hope.
> 
> But propaganda is not science.
> 
> This article discusses why people can give disproportionate weight
> to personal experiences and anecdotes even when larger, systematically
> collected datasets point in another direction.
>   *How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results*
>   <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-anecdotal-evidence-can-undermine-scientific-results/>
>    "thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not"
> 
> The question being asked here is about science. Facts. Good data.
> Real data. And, to my knowledge, only the USA has compiled that data.
> 
> Accident rate = number of motor-vehicle accidents � vehicle miles driven
> Usually expressed as accidents per 1 million vehicle-miles traveled
> or equivalently per 100 million VMT (vehicle miles traveled).
> 
> Given that's the ONLY metric that matters in any first-order discussion,
> luckily the federal government explicitly recognizes number of accidents
> per 100 million VMT as a highway safety performance measure.
> 
> Unfortunately, our first data-collection issue is Census has historical
> motor-vehicle accident counts, while FHWA has the historical VMT series.
> 
> Since this is getting long, let's take that up separately, since we
> are not asking for anecdotal data, nor cherry-picked data, but for
> the accidents divided by miles driven, either of or both of which
> are accurate federal statistics which have been kept since the 1920s.

Without regard to the larger questions you address, people 
driving while engaging in audio conversation, telephone or 
radio, seem not to be the actual problem.

Blasting that guy you have never met in a texting battle, 
playing video games, watching porn or movies and the like 
are of an entirely different risk level for distraction.

Legislatures, who regularly specify large hammers for 
disposing of an ant, conflate the two.

-- 
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

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#156013

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-18 19:18 +0300
Message-ID	<118jo95$5r1$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#156008

AMuzi wrote:
> Without regard to the larger questions you address, people 
> driving while engaging in audio conversation, telephone or 
> radio, seem not to be the actual problem.
> 
> Blasting that guy you have never met in a texting battle, 
> playing video games, watching porn or movies and the like 
> are of an entirely different risk level for distraction.
> 
> Legislatures, who regularly specify large hammers for 
> disposing of an ant, conflate the two.

Hi Andrew,

I agree with you completely. 

Remember back in 2008 when the Governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo, made a big 
propaganda show with the major cable companies and ISPs over kiddie porn, 
enabling AT&T and the others the excuse to summarily drop Usenet feeds?

Just as with the insurance companies in cahoots with the states, I don't 
doubt the cable companies approached Cuomo saying "hey, we want to drop 
Usenet, but let's do it together as a charade that we're 'doing our bit' to 
combat kiddie porn".

The fact is it was total theater and pure PR to claim Usenet was all porn.

They used a horrific emotionally-charged issue as cover to kill off an 
expensive, bandwidth-heavy legacy service that had nothing to do with the 
actual illegal content, looking like they were taking action while just 
ditching a service they simply didn't want to pay to maintain anymore	.

I think you're arguing likewise, that lawmakers are unfairly grouping all 
forms of in-car distraction together under the same heavy laws, even though 
they represent vastly different levels of risk.
 a. Audio vs visual distractions
 b. Extreme distractions 
 c. Overreaching laws

Standard audio conversations, whether on the phone, the radio, or talking 
to a passenger are not actually a major safety problem (unless it's that 
damned crying brat in the car seat that the driver just can's shut up.) :)

There's a difference between simple audio multitasking versus cognitive 
distractions like texting, playing video games, or watching movies/porn, 
stating these are on a completely different level of danger (although, I 
can't imagine anyone watching porn while driving, and, if they did, I'd 
argue that this is why I always got a 'good student' discount on my 
insurance and they don't because it's clear they make bad decisions).

The legislatures want to "appear" to be "doing something" about it, much 
like my Cuomo example which we all know in the USA because the cable 
companies used kiddie porn as the excuse for dropping our Usenet access.

The funny thing about "large hammers for disposing of an ant", is that we 
looked in the past at systematic reviews of studies which showed the effect 
of all US automotive safety laws that impacted the driver directly, and 
absolutely none of them (not even one!) showed any correlation whatsoever 
with accidents. Not even one. There was a second-order effect, but zero 
first order effects, even of laws such as seat belts, which makes sense, 
but there was zero correlation with accidents. None. Zip Nada.

That included cellphone laws as they went into effect in a staged manner 
per state, and there is no correlation whatsoever with reducing accidents.

Hence, I agree lawmakers pass broad, blunt laws that conflate low-risk 
audio habits with higher-risk cognitive habits without properly 
distinguishing between them. 	

Moving forward, our hypothesis should be that accident rates should have 
"changed" in some manner during the years that cell phones were introduced 
to driving, where we can delve into specific periods to look at accident 
rates.

 1. Pre-cellular baseline 1937-1982 No commercial US cellular service
 2. Cellular introduced	1983 First commercial cellular service began
 3. Early adoption 1984-1989 Cell phones existed but were still rare
 4. Rapid adoption 1990-1999 Cellular subscriptions exploded
 5. Mass adoption 2000-2004 >100 million U.S. wireless connections
 6. Essentially ubiquitous 2005-2010 ~208M -> 296M wireless connections
 7. Smartphone era 2011-present	Smartphones become dominant

If cellphones 'cause' accidents in a meaningful way, shouldn't we see 
"something" happening to the accident rate (which is good data kept for 
over a century) between the time before and the time during and after?

Yes?
No? 
-- 
Even good facts cannot trump propaganda when a person is a biased zealot.

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#156015

From	Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid>
Date	2026-09-18 19:26 +0100
Message-ID	<118jvok$1g32n$3@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#156008

On 2026-09-18, AMuzi wrote:

> On 9/17/2026 9:52 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:
>> badgolferman wrote:
>>
[...]
>> Since this is getting long, let's take that up separately, since we
>> are not asking for anecdotal data, nor cherry-picked data, but for
>> the accidents divided by miles driven, either of or both of which
>> are accurate federal statistics which have been kept since the 1920s.
>
> Without regard to the larger questions you address, people driving
> while engaging in audio conversation, telephone or radio, seem not to
> be the actual problem.

It is a problem. Will depend of the person, but it certainly robs their
attention. Some people probably can't handle being in a phone-less voice
conversation with someone else inside the car without it taking a toll
on their attention and reaction time.

> Blasting that guy you have never met in a texting battle, playing
> video games, watching porn or movies and the like are of an entirely
> different risk level for distraction.
>
> Legislatures, who regularly specify large hammers for disposing of an
> ant, conflate the two.

I'm not even sure that relates. The "hammer" would be specific fines for
using phones when driving, but that's just a tip of the icebergs that
will cover the legal consequences.

-- 
Nuno Silva

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#156054

From	bad sector <forgetski@_INVALID.net>
Date	2026-09-20 15:08 -0400
Message-ID	<S-KdnSnijNMfsi33nZ2dnZfqn_qdnZ2d@giganews.com>
In reply to	#155996

On 9/17/26 8:43 PM, badgolferman wrote:

> You’ve brought this topic up before.
> 
> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
> don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
> consistent with the raw data.

My only ever stats prof opened the semester with

"statistics is the science that allows us to prove anything, or its 
opposite".


> I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
My view exactly. One of them got to within inches of killing me; the 
only answer is to pull their license for 5 years, on the retry give them 
a 1000 question quiz on defensive driving... miss one and you fail for 
another 5 years.

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#156066

From	Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
Date	2026-09-21 10:23 +1200
Message-ID	<118pmdu$3gu5h$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#156054

On 2026-09-20 19:08:03 +0000, bad sector said:
> On 9/17/26 8:43 PM, badgolferman wrote:
> 
>> You’ve brought this topic up before.
>> 
>> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
>> don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
>> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
>> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
>> consistent with the raw data.
> 
> My only ever stats prof opened the semester with
> 
> "statistics is the science that allows us to prove anything, or its opposite".

Yep. Surveys, polls, studies, etc. only ever prove what the person 
paying for it wants them to prove. They are also usually run with 
ridiculously small sample sizes and (purposely) lots of restrictions on 
who can answer them. Then any answewrs they don't like or other 
possible options are simply ignored.  :-\

Plus, after heavy manipulation, results are usually released in a 
percentage format to purposely con the general public.

That's why one week you'll get a study that says "product XYZ is good 
for you" and the next week another silly study that says "product XYZ 
is bad for you".

The really dangerous ones are the medical studies, such as the "you 
have to drink eight glasses of water a day" nonsense. Stupid people 
believing such idiocy can seriously harm or kill themselves.

>> I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
> 
> My view exactly. One of them got to within inches of killing me; the 
> only answer is to pull their license for 5 years, on the retry give 
> them a 1000 question quiz on defensive driving... miss one and you fail 
> for another 5 years.

Cancel their license, crush the car (even it they don't own it), crush 
the phone ... and if they seriously hurt or kill someone else, then 
instantly go to jail (a proper bread-n-water jail, not a luxury hotel 
that most western jails are these days).

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#156069

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-21 01:49 +0300
Message-ID	<118pnt1$2ira$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#156066

Your Name wrote:
>> My only ever stats prof opened the semester with
>> 
>> "statistics is the science that allows us to prove anything, or its opposite".
> 
> Yep. Surveys, polls, studies, etc. only ever prove what the person 
> paying for it wants them to prove. They are also usually run with 
> ridiculously small sample sizes and (purposely) lots of restrictions on 
> who can answer them. Then any answewrs they don't like or other 
> possible options are simply ignored.  :-\
> 
> Plus, after heavy manipulation, results are usually released in a 
> percentage format to purposely con the general public.
> 
> That's why one week you'll get a study that says "product XYZ is good 
> for you" and the next week another silly study that says "product XYZ 
> is bad for you".
> 
> The really dangerous ones are the medical studies, such as the "you 
> have to drink eight glasses of water a day" nonsense. Stupid people 
> believing such idiocy can seriously harm or kill themselves.

Notice that the Apple posters never look at the actual data, and they don't
provide any actual data, but they use pithy aphorisms to say all data that
they haven't ever looked at nor understood, must be bad, because of ... 
 
(I've compiled these excuses for Apple facts over the years from them...)

 a. "Correlation isn't causation." 
     True, but often used as though it means correlation tells us nothing.
 b. "Statistics can prove anything." 
     Usually a way of avoiding asking which statistics, from what data, 
     using what method?
 c. "Numbers don't lie; liars use numbers." 
     A rhetorical escape hatch rather than an analysis of the numbers.
 d. "You can make statistics say whatever you want."
     Sometimes true of bad analysis but it's not an argument against 
     a particular analysis.
 e. "That's just a statistic." 
     As though aggregation somehow makes measurements cease to be evidence.
 f. "I don't need statistics as I have common sense." 
     Particularly useful when the question is precisely whether 
     intuition matches reality.
 g. "My experience says otherwise." 
     An anecdote promoted to the status of a representative sample.
 h. "I've never seen that happen." 
     A one-person observation treated as evidence about a population.
 i. "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." 
     A wonderfully reusable way of declining to investigate what 
     the statistics actually show.
 j. "You can't reduce everything to numbers." 
     Often correct, but irrelevant when the question is specifically 
     quantitative.
 k. "Statistics don't tell the whole story." 
     They generally don't but the interesting question is what part
     of the story they do tell.
 l. "That's just an average." 
     As if distributions, confidence intervals, sample sizes, etc. 
     don't exist.
 m. "The sample size is only X." 
     Sometimes an excellent objectionx but sometimes merely a number 
     repeated without considering whether X is actually inadequate 
     for the effect being measured.
 n. "Who funded the study?" 
     A legitimate question about conflicts of interest that can also 
     be deployed as a conversation-ending genetic fallacy.
 o. "Scientists have been wrong before." 
     Technically irrefutable and almost completely nonresponsive.
 p. "There are studies on both sides." 
     Treating the mere existence of opposing studies as evidence 
     that the evidence is evenly balanced.
 q. "Show me a study that proves it." 
     Often sneaks an impossible standard of absolute proof 
     into an empirical question.
 r. "That's not statistically significant, therefore there's no effect." 
     A particularly technical version of the same mistake.
 s. "It could just be chance." 
     A possibility is not a probability estimate.
 t. "That's an outlier." 
     Sometimes correct but sometimes an attempt to throw away an 
     inconvenient observation without a principled criterion.
 u. "Statistics are manipulated by whoever collects them." 
     Possible, but again doesn't establish that these particular 
     data were manipulated.
 v. "People aren't statistics." 
     True and entirely compatible with statistics being about populations.
 w. "The data are cherry-picked."
     Sometimes an important criticism, but it needs to identify what 
     relevant data were omitted and why their inclusion would change 
     the conclusion.
 x. "That's not what the numbers really mean."
     A wonderfully convenient assertion when one doesn't want to say 
     what the numbers actually mean instead.
 y. "You can find a study to support anything."
     The existence of a bad or contrary study doesn't establish 
     that the available evidence is evenly divided.
 z. "Well, that's just your interpretation of the data."
     Sometimes legitimate, but often used without offering an alternative 
     analysis of the data or explaining why the original interpretation 
     is wrong.

The Apple posters think, that by claiming all data they are ignorant of
(which is all data, by the way) is bad data, they can make it go away.

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#156073

From	Old John <watcombeman@yahoo.co.uk>
Date	2026-09-21 06:32 +0000
Message-ID	<118qj1e$3oi4b$1@dont-email.me>
In reply to	#156054

On 20 Sep 2026 at 20:08:03 BST, "bad sector" <forgetski@_INVALID.net> wrote:

> On 9/17/26 8:43 PM, badgolferman wrote:
> 
>> You’ve brought this topic up before.
>> 
>> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
>> don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
>> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
>> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
>> consistent with the raw data.
> 
> My only ever stats prof opened the semester with
> 
> "statistics is the science that allows us to prove anything, or its
> opposite".
> 
> 
>> I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
> My view exactly. One of them got to within inches of killing me; the
> only answer is to pull their license for 5 years, on the retry give them
> a 1000 question quiz on defensive driving... miss one and you fail for
> another 5 years.

Can I recommend "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff? Published back
in 1954.
-- 
Classic computing: Computers do what you tell them to do,
not what you want them to do.
Modern computing: Computers do what they want to do,
no matter what you tell them to do.

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#156081

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-21 12:44 +0300
Message-ID	<118quai$230k$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#156073

Old John wrote:
>>> I think it�s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
>> My view exactly. One of them got to within inches of killing me; the
>> only answer is to pull their license for 5 years, on the retry give them
>> a 1000 question quiz on defensive driving... miss one and you fail for
>> another 5 years.
> 
> Can I recommend "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff? Published back
> in 1954.

It's not funny. 
It's merely a dodge to make the good data go away.

It's a tactic used by nutcase religious zealots to make science disappear.

People who have never even *L@@KED* at the data, who want to make the data
go away, always say one of the following, which is what you just did.

It means "I'm too stupid to even L@@K at the data so I'll parrot a pithy
aphorism that instantly refutes all good science that I can't understand".

 a. "Correlation isn't causation." 
     True, but often used as though it means correlation tells us nothing.
 b. "Statistics can prove anything." 
     Usually a way of avoiding asking which statistics, from what data, 
     using what method?
 c. "Numbers don't lie; liars use numbers." 
     A rhetorical escape hatch rather than an analysis of the numbers.
 d. "You can make statistics say whatever you want."
     Sometimes true of bad analysis but it's not an argument against 
     a particular analysis.
 e. "That's just a statistic." 
     As though aggregation somehow makes measurements cease to be evidence.
 f. "I don't need statistics as I have common sense." 
     Particularly useful when the question is precisely whether 
     intuition matches reality.
 g. "My experience says otherwise." 
     An anecdote promoted to the status of a representative sample.
 h. "I've never seen that happen." 
     A one-person observation treated as evidence about a population.
 i. "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics." 
     A wonderfully reusable way of declining to investigate what 
     the statistics actually show.
 j. "You can't reduce everything to numbers." 
     Often correct, but irrelevant when the question is specifically 
     quantitative.
 k. "Statistics don't tell the whole story." 
     They generally don't but the interesting question is what part
     of the story they do tell.
 l. "That's just an average." 
     As if distributions, confidence intervals, sample sizes, etc. 
     don't exist.
 m. "The sample size is only X." 
     Sometimes an excellent objection but sometimes merely a number 
     repeated without considering whether X is actually inadequate 
     for the effect being measured.
 n. "Who funded the study?" 
     A legitimate question about conflicts of interest that can also 
     be deployed as a conversation-ending genetic fallacy.
 o. "Scientists have been wrong before." 
     Technically irrefutable and almost completely nonresponsive.
 p. "There are studies on both sides." 
     Treating the mere existence of opposing studies as evidence 
     that the evidence is evenly balanced.
 q. "Show me a study that proves it." 
     Often sneaks an impossible standard of absolute proof 
     into an empirical question.
 r. "That's not statistically significant, therefore there's no effect." 
     A particularly technical version of the same mistake.
 s. "It could just be chance." 
     A possibility is not a probability estimate.
 t. "That's an outlier." 
     Sometimes correct but sometimes an attempt to throw away an 
     inconvenient observation without a principled criterion.
 u. "Statistics are manipulated by whoever collects them." 
     Possible, but again doesn't establish that these particular 
     data were manipulated.
 v. "People aren't statistics." 
     True and entirely compatible with statistics being about populations.
 w. "The data are cherry-picked."
     Sometimes an important criticism, but it needs to identify what 
     relevant data were omitted and why their inclusion would change 
     the conclusion.
 x. "That's not what the numbers really mean."
     A wonderfully convenient assertion when one doesn't want to say 
     what the numbers actually mean instead.
 y. "You can find a study to support anything."
     The existence of a bad or contrary study doesn't establish 
     that the available evidence is evenly divided.
 z. "Well, that's just your interpretation of the data."
     Sometimes legitimate, but often used without offering an alternative 
     analysis of the data or explaining why the original interpretation 
     is wrong.
-- 
People who have never even L@@Ked at the data are the ones who parrot 
these because they want their pithy aphorism to make the data go away.

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#156126

From	bad sector <forgetski@_INVALID.net>
Date	2026-09-23 15:13 -0400
Message-ID	<y66cnYyHC_R3uSn3nZ2dnZfqn_ednZ2d@giganews.com>
In reply to	#156073

On 9/21/26 2:32 AM, Old John wrote:
> On 20 Sep 2026 at 20:08:03 BST, "bad sector" <forgetski@_INVALID.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 9/17/26 8:43 PM, badgolferman wrote:
>>
>>> You’ve brought this topic up before.
>>>
>>> As someone who works in the science field, I can assure you statistics
>>> don’t always tell the truth. The criteria are often cherry picked, the data
>>> can easily be skewed if not collected in a controlled environment, and the
>>> biases of the researchers often provide conclusions not necessarily
>>> consistent with the raw data.
>>
>> My only ever stats prof opened the semester with
>>
>> "statistics is the science that allows us to prove anything, or its
>> opposite".
>>
>>
>>> I think it’s pretty obvious if you look at drivers around you that
>>> distracted driving is out of control and in turn it leads to erratic
>>> driving. I trust personal anecdotes more than statistics in this case.
>> My view exactly. One of them got to within inches of killing me; the
>> only answer is to pull their license for 5 years, on the retry give them
>> a 1000 question quiz on defensive driving... miss one and you fail for
>> another 5 years.
> 
> Can I recommend "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff? Published back
> in 1954.

In the old days you could reach for the dash, find the heater controls 
and id the one you want just by touching to set up exactly what you want 
without EVER taking yor eyes off the road. When people do their smartass 
bit with me I just say "well over a million miles in 70 years of driving 
and not a single accident, argue with THAT".

This is not a joke, years ago I once answered a polling call and 
expressed without reservation my then ultra-conservative opinions (in 
the middle of an election campaign). I got another two or three calls 
within a couple of weeks presumably because some pollster already knew 
how I would answer :-)

https://imgur.com/screenshot-SdrsEbs

Nowadays I just ask them to confirm if the call is about 'consultation', 
because I do that too for only $200/minute and want to know who to send 
the bill to.

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#156128

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-24 09:45 +1200
Message-ID	<1191h9u$s96$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#156126

bad sector wrote:
> In the old days you could reach for the dash, find the heater controls 
> and id the one you want just by touching to set up exactly what you want 
> without EVER taking yor eyes off the road. When people do their smartass 
> bit with me I just say "well over a million miles in 70 years of driving 
> and not a single accident, argue with THAT".
> 
> This is not a joke, years ago I once answered a polling call and 
> expressed without reservation my then ultra-conservative opinions (in 
> the middle of an election campaign). I got another two or three calls 
> within a couple of weeks presumably because some pollster already knew 
> how I would answer :-)
> 
> https://imgur.com/screenshot-SdrsEbs
> 
> Nowadays I just ask them to confirm if the call is about 'consultation', 
> because I do that too for only $200/minute and want to know who to send 
> the bill to.

There's no doubt that distractions cause a minor number of accidents. 
I don't think anyone doubts that, but what's the major cause of accidents?
 a. Speeding
 b. Intoxication
 c. Failure to yield

Cellphones had no effect on those accidents, which form the bulk of the
accidents and which were, presumably, wholly unaffected by cell phone use.

In addition, cellphones were an added distraction to the already long list
of over a thousand known distractions while driving, but if you read the
news, you'd think cellphones caused this horrid spike in the accident rate.

It didn't.
There wasn't even a blip.

Which is the point of this thread.
People believe the propaganda w/o question who believe that it did.

I wrote this thread so that intelligent people could question their
religious belief system, which was fed to them by these biased entities:
 1. News media (man bites dog being more interesting than dog bites man)
 2. Insurance
 3. Politicians (and police)
 4. Lawyers

Notice NOBODY can show the USA accident rate even so much as showed a blip.
Hence, anyone who claims otherwise, is espousing a purely religious belief.

Devoid of fact.

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#156132

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Date	2026-09-25 00:42 +1200
Message-ID	<11935rk$19ch$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>
In reply to	#156128

> On 9/23/26 17:45, Maria Sophia wrote:
>> There's no doubt that distractions cause a minor number of accidents.
>> I don't think anyone doubts that, but what's the major cause of accidents?
>>   a. Speeding
>>   b. Intoxication
>>   c. Failure to yield

While it's trivial to compare crash data to cellphone ownership trends
by simple arithmetic, where we only need to account for the well reported
 a. Total number of accidents
 b. Divided by total number of miles driven
 c. For the periods before, during and after cellphones skyrocketed

A lot of the data is clouded by "injuries" and "fatalities", which are 
second-order effects (as the accident has to happen for their to be them).

Not only does an accident have to happen to have injuries and fatalities, 
but many other factors play a role, such as the speed at which emergency
services arrives, and the availability of local medivac transport, etc.

Nonetheless, we get some idea of what actually causes accidents in
this "copyright 2026 National Safety Council" report on 
 *Distracted Driving*
 <https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/distracted-driving/>
And 
 *Improper Driving and Road Rage*
 <https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safety-issues/improper-driving-and-road-rage/>
Which reports:
 Speed too fast or unsafe �V 18.8%
 Failure to yield right-of-way �V 8.4%
 Careless driving �V 7.6%
 Improper lane usage �V 5.2%
But bear in mind those are for *fatal* crashes, which, while useful and 
while interesting, my argument is about crashes, which are first-order.

While it's notoriously difficult to ascertain how much any given 
driver is using a cellphone while driving, pertinent is this statement
 "Over the last 10 years, the prevalence of drivers using hand-held 
  cell phones at any given daylight moment has decreased from 3.8% 
  of drivers in 2015 to 1.9% in 2024."

 "The percentage of drivers manipulating hand-held electronic devices 
  has increased 104%, from 2.2% in 2015 to 4.5% in 2024. Among other 
  activities, this observation includes text messaging. Drivers 
  observed with visible headsets remain low at 0.5% in 2024."

The main problem is *how* they collect that data, which I've reported
in the past (a decade or more ago) was done by red-light observations.

For those who wish to look at 2nd-order effects (e.g., fatalities), 
this reference breaks down the cause of fatalities state by state.
 *Fatality Facts 2024, State by state*
 <https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state#yearly-snapshot>

Please bear in mind fatalities are NOT what I'm talking about, 
because, while they're important, they're a 2nd-order effect
which has many more statistical complications (e.g., how long
it takes an ambulance to arrive) than just 1st-order crashes.
-- 
People tend to parrot propaganda without ever looking at the data.

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Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?

Contents

#155990 — Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?

#155993

#156025

#155994

#155996

#155998

#156006

#156026

#155999

#156008

#156013

#156015

#156054

#156066

#156069

#156073

#156081

#156126

#156128

#156132