‘Making calls while driving not linked to accident figures’

A team at Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics analysed more than eight million incidents of car crashes and all fatalities on roads in eight US states.They examined data before and after 9pm local time over a three-year period.However they say their results do not include texting or internet browsing.The timeslot was […]

A team at Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics analysed more than eight million incidents of car crashes and all fatalities on roads in eight US states.
They examined data before and after 9pm local time over a three-year period.
However they say their results do not include texting or internet browsing.
The timeslot was chosen because during the period studied (2002 – 2005) many American mobile phone operators offered free calls after 9pm during the week.
Prof Saurabh Bhargava from Carnegie and Dr Vikram Pathania from the LSE found that while there was an increase in callers using multiple phone masts after 9pm, there was no corresponding increase in the number of road accidents.
Dr Pathania told the BBC they were “very surprised” by the results.
“At first we thought the numbers were wrong. We went back and checked everything – but there was nothing going on at all,” he said.
“We just know that we saw a big jump in cellphone use and there was no impact on the crash rate.”