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

From	Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com>
Newsgroups	comp.mobile.android, misc.phone.mobile.iphone, rec.autos.tech, rec.autos.driving
Subject	Re: Why do people claim cellphone use increased the USA accident rate?
Date	2026-09-19 00:11 +0300
Organization	BWH Usenet Archive (https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com)
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Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>Please explain the improvement in driver awareness, reaction 
>>time and overall safety on the public roads when changing 
>>from playing a video game on a telephone to playing a video 
>>game on the dash console.
> 
> People are experts at multitasking.  They have no problem having one hand
> on the wheel, one hand holding their sandwich, and one hand on their beer.
> It's all perfectly safe.  So how could anyone possibly be at risk just because
> they are paying attention to the person on Facebook whose political beliefs
> are clearly wrong instead of to the road?  The road can take care of itself.
> And turn signals?  Those other people have no business knowing where you're
> going.  They should keep to themselves.

Hi Scott,
I wonder if you even realize how absurd your argument is, to a scientist?
You're attempting to ridicule your absurd distortion of the argument.

That's called beating a strawman.
And claiming victory.

Stop it.
Be scientific please.

 a. You claim cellphones are a distraction (and they are)
 b. Out of, oh, there are about a hundred the government listed
 c. And then you claim, unilaterally, it's NUMBER ONE in that hundred????
 d. When, clearly, it's not???? WTF?
 e. Worse, you seem to claim distractions are the ONLY cause of accidents!
    WTF? Not speed? Not drunken driving? WTF? 

Who makes such absurd arguments by ridiculing the facts? 
No scientist would say what you just said, Scott. None.

Cellphones are not the major cause of accidents.
They're not even the major distraction in accidents, in fact.

It's not even in the top ten for God's sake.

People have been handling distractions while driving since driving started.
What's different now?

What is the claim that people are making here given nobody is claiming
there aren't a zillion distractions while driving that everyone feels.

We covered, years ago, all the major distractions (there were about 100).

Cellphones barely made the top ten, and then it depended, as others have
said, on what the driver was doing with the cell phone at any given time.

If cellphone use had *any* effect whatsoever, our hypothesis would be that
there should be a spike or jump in the accident rate during those years.
 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

Nobody ever said cell phones aren't one of the hundreds of distractions.
What is your claim about the accident rate changes during that period? 

The accident rate is the number of accidents divided by miles driven.
 a. FHWA gives annual USA vehicle-mile-traveled from 1900 through 2024.
 b. That's our denominator.
 c. NHTSA's General Estimates System (GES) began in 1988 and was 
    specifically designed to estimate the number of USA police-reported
    motor-vehicle crashes that had any damage or injury. 
 d. That's our numerator.

This is good data. 
It's not cherry picked.

What do YOU think it tells us about crashes during the cellphone period?
-- 
Most people know so little science they can't understand an hypothesis.

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