"The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such
laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have
established that phoning while driving increases crash risk," says
Adrian Lund, president of both the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety and
HLDI.
In New York the HLDI researchers did find a decrease in collision
claim frequencies, relative to comparison states, but this decreasing
trend began well before the state’s ban on hand-held phoning while
driving and actually paused briefly when the ban took effect. Trends in
the District of Columbia, Connecticut, and California didn’t change.
"So the new findings don’t match what we already know about the risk of phoning and texting while driving," Lund points out.
"If crash risk increases with phone use and fewer drivers use phones
where it’s illegal to do so, we would expect to see a decrease in
crashes. But we aren’t seeing it. Nor do we see collision claim
increases before the phone bans took effect. This is surprising, too,
given what we know about the growing use of cellphones and the risk of
phoning while driving. We’re currently gathering data to figure out
this mismatch."