I was listening to TwIT yesterday while exercising, and they went off on a long rant about how dangerous it is for people to drive while talking on phones - handsfree or not. There was a lot of talk about the "suppressed" NHTSA report, which claims that driving while talking is extremely dangerous:

In the suppressed report, researchers estimated that cell-phone-related distraction had caused 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents in 2002 alone. In a letter to then Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta—another item that was withheld and never sent—the researchers warned that hands-free laws might not be enough.

One thing I know is that mobile phone usage has been going up steadily over the last few years, and cars have been getting only marginally safer (many of the big wins in car safety happened a long while back). So I went looking for traffic fatality records, and ran across this:

The U.S. Department of Transportation today announced that the number of overall traffic fatalities reported in 2008 hit their lowest level since 1961 and that fatalities in the first three months of 2009 continue to decrease. The fatality rate, which accounts for variables like fewer miles traveled, also reached the lowest level ever recorded.

I see a small problem here. The roads are getting progressively less deadly even as cell phone use increases. It's not that phones aren't distracting; they are. But plenty of other things are distracting as well, and the raw reality is that the death toll on the roads is trending down, not up.

Make me go Hmmmm

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