Phoning While Driving Stats Analysed and Assessed
A lot has been said about phone use while behind the wheel; perhaps even a bit too much. Drivers young and middle and even old aged have therefore become rather irritated by such talk, to the point that it is often ignored. What then occurs is the replacement of factual statistics with experienced facts; the latter being what the driver understands to be the reality through personal luck while adhering to their own accepted practices.
Ignorance is bliss, but the ignorance of bliss makes it short lived. It is therefore essential that some hard UK statistics concerning the matter are presented. It is also important to debunk some of the information that has spread regarding phoning while driving, in order for the more informative and direct statistics to hold greater acknowledgement.
Texting whilst driving
Fact #1
Talking on a mobile phone while driving can make a young driver’s reaction time as slow as that of a 70 year old.
On the face of it, this is an interesting fact and one that shows just how dangerous phoning a friend while driving can be. However, despite most car insurance quotes suggesting otherwise, the statistics behind drivers over the age of 70 indicate more road accidents caused by teen drivers anyway. Even when the accident rates of both age groups are to be measured in consideration to the actual percentage of drivers within them, teenage drivers are shown to be involved in more car accidents. In this sense, it is then actually safer for a teenager to talk on the phone while driving!
Fact Status: DEBUNKED
Fact #2
While teenagers are texting, they spend approximately 10 percent of the time outside the driving lane they’re supposed to be in.
This statistic damns the practice of texting while driving.
The ability to multitask is one inherent within humankind; however our capabilities of doing so haven’t quite been discerned. It is suspected that our multitasking prowess is relative to the individual. Thus this statistic indicates that ten percent of individuals fail at multitasking successfully, without compromising not just their road safety but that of those around them.
This may very well be true, as the ability to multitask requires more disciplined mental strength then is inbuilt in many of us. However, if it is a truth, then it is one that hasn’t effectively been translated through the statistic. This is as the only way one can take it seriously, is by comparing it to a statistic revealing the percentage of which children spend outside of the driving lane they’re supposed to be in, when not texting. As the statistic is unaccompanied by such a study, it is rendered void.
Fact Status: DEBUNKED
Fact #3
About 6,000 deaths and half a million injuries are caused by distracted drivers every year in the United States.
We begin the exploration of this fact, with the same ethos used to discern the last. A fact including a variable only holds significance, if it is contrasted to a value confirming the reality when the included variable is absent. In other words, the fact that 6,000 deaths and half a million injuries are caused by distracted drivers every year is an empty statistic without knowing the amount of deaths and injuries that occur annually while drivers aren’t distracted.
We must then understand what was meant in the term distracted by the author of this statistic. If he or she meant the term to mean the actual general meaning of the term – a diversion that prevents someone from giving their full attention to something else – then it is impossible to measure the influence of distractions on car injuries. It is beyond human capabilities to calculate how many sufferers of car accidents were distracted beforehand – for distractions by our general definition can occur from within the mental psyche, rendering them to be immeasurable variants.
Let’s however, suppose that the term distracted is intended by the author to strictly mean diversions deriving from a phone. We’d still need to know how many road deaths and injuries occur while drivers are not on the phone.
Taking a look at road deaths, a total of 32,788 people died in the United States while on the road. We now know that 6000 of those were due to distractions which we have just agreed to newly define as phone use. That means 18.3 percent of road deaths are due to phone use. That is a large proportion and under our newly agreed interpretation of distraction, enough to condemn phone use while driving as a life endangering hazard. However, that is if the term distraction meant our latter definition.
Fact Status: INCONCLUSIVE
It is possibly rather inappropriate to conclude with the inconclusive. However what can be said is this: although we aren’t yet given clear statistics to the true dangers of phoning while driving; in matters of life and death, opt to play it safe. Stay clear from using your phone while driving as if your life depended on it. For it very well may. However, keep intellectually diligent while being addressed with a statistic regarding this matter, for many are simply empty and meaningless without further investigation.
Writer: Tahar Rajab
