Driving While Texting
I saw James Robertson’s comments on a report on the safety of conducting cell phone conversations while driving. Jim challenges the report’s conclusion, noting that traffic fatalities are at their lowest level in nearly 50 years, while cell phone usage is steadily increasing.
In Jim’s comments, someone else mentioned the mistake in correlating fatalities with dangerous activities. Steven Levitt makes a similar mistake in Freakonomics talking about the economic value of child car seats – he considers only fatalities but doesn’t consider that a child who gets launched through a windshield but is left permanently impaired or severely injured is in an economic sense, not much better off than the child who was killed outright. The real cost calculation would involve lumping fatalities and near-fatalities into the same group.
Put another way, if we’ve established that roads are safer, is it reasonable that we relax the limits on DUI? In fact, you could argue that if you can establish that talking on a cell (or texting, allegedly 4x more likely to get you in an accident) is in fact dangerous, it’s more reprehensible behavior that DUI, since by definition, DUI involves impairment of mental and moral facilities. Jim’s questions on eating hamburgers and applying makeup are good ones, and likely have interesting answers, but don’t necessarily amount to an argument that cell phone usage while driving shouldn’t be regulated.
— Gordon Weakliem
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You should go talk to Jeff Nolan about this. It’s fun!
— Brian R · 4 August 2009, 16:06 · #