Re: It's a myth that cellphone use caused the accident rate to rise in the USA

badgolferman wrote on Sun, 26 May 2024 15:15:59 -0000 (UTC) :

A BMW K1200 is a very nice motorcycle.  Surely you have stories of your
own regarding distracted drivers and how they affect others on the road.

I welcome intelligent discourse between adults who can use their brains.

I'm a big German guy so I happen to like bimmers & beemers, but you can't
own either of those without learning way too much about fixing them. :)

Especially if an opposing cager looks to be turning left in front of
you.

 
That is among the worst offenses, but there are so many more as you
well know.

California isn't so bad. Back east it's worse for bikers due to the weather
and the drivers and the fact you can't share the same lane in most states.

Did you get the good-student discount when you were a kid? I did.
Do you know why they give it out? I do.

 
No, because I wasn't a good student and was involved with the wrong
crowd in high school.  Tell us why they give it out.

It's simple: Smart people have fewer accidents.

Which is the whole point, really, that cellphones use in and of itself
doesn't cause accidents. People are gonna have accidents no matter what.

BTW, if I were a moron, I'd also think that the accident rate must have
gone up and then leveled off trending with cellphone ownership rates.

But not being a moron... I looked it up.
And that's when I found out that the accident rate trend is unchanged.

That's just a fact. Nobody but a fool would disagree with that fact.
So the adult question to ask is why.

Drivers using their cellphones tend not to move with the flow of
traffic,  instead going slower and keeping excessive space in front
of them. This has  the effect of pissing off people behind them who
try their damnest to get  around them. Distracted drivers can't
stay in their lane, leading to other  drivers having to avoid them.
Distracted drivers fail to go when the  traffic light turns green
and cause cars farther back to miss the light  cycle and wait again
for the green light. There are many more examples, but  you get the
picture. Surely you can add more.

I base my assessments first on the facts.
Once I understand the facts, then I can move on to their assessment.

Here's a fact that we must start with given it's a fundamental truth:
 *Accident trends show no effect whatsoever during cellphone years*

Yet most of us would have thought that distractions cause accidents,
particularly when dumb people are distracted (see good student discount).

So we would have thought that the accident rate should have reflected
greater rates of accidents during the times cellphones skyrocketed.

But it didn't happen.
So we're left with explaining why.

I'm not stupid; so I can come up with a whole bunch of hypotheses.
But they're just my hypotheses.

Nobody ever said that driving entails handling distractions well.
(See good student discount comment above.)
>

Common sense would dictate that statistics can be manipulated to
say what  you want.

Not raw statistics.
It's the conclusions you make from raw statistics that are manipulated.

The raw statistic of pure accident rates is not manipulated (AFAIK).

Note by the way that it's an act of desperation to (a) not know the
statistics, and then (b) disagree with them anyway, and even much worse, to
(c) claim that the raw statistics are "manipulated".

It's disingenuous at best. Deceitful at worst. It's what micky did.
It's what all the ignorant Apple zealots do when Apple facts are noted.

Don't do that.
If you don't believe the statistic, then you just don't believe in facts.

The statistics themselves say nothing directly about cellphones.
Especially since they've been gathered since the 1920's the same ways.

But nobody disagrees with the reliable accident stats that I quoted.

 
As you may remember, I also work in the field of science.  Specifically
raw data collection and processing.  I have personally witnessed the
lead scientist berating the reports because the raw data didn't support
the narrative he was trying to create.  He ordered the processing
algorithms to be manipulated so they would show what he wanted.  Those
reports and processed data are now cited as facts by the world over.

Bear in mind that I looked at the raw data to see if it supported the
conclusion every moron has made that cellphones must raise accident rates.

It's just not supported in the raw data, which, let's repeat, is reliable
data which has been compiled since the 1920's the same way and nobody
complained that it's skewed toward or against cellphones (because it has
nothing, directly, to do with cellphones).

All it is, of course, is the total number of reported accidents divided by
the number of miles driven (which is the normalized accident rate).

I argue that the reported accidents or the number of miles driven are
manipulated (by whom?) in favor (or not) of cellphones... is absurd.

It's just reported accidents. Divided by the number of miles driven.
It has nothing to do with cellphones, per se.

But it does tell us a lot when we compare it to the period of time when
cellphones went from 0% to 100% saturation in vehicles, does it not.

I'm not saying that's the case here, but accident rate is not the
only factor which can be used to measure the impact cellphone
drivers have  on other drivers.

It's a fundamental metric though.

I wish we had accurate data on cellphone *usage* while driving.
But we don't.

I also wish we had accurate statistics on distractions while driving.
We do, but every list I look at is different.
So we don't.

Still, the Connecticut cite I previously provided says what any sensible
person would have said, which is that it's overblown at the very least.

 <https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/law_review/8/>
 "The use of cell phones while driving has been demonized by many
  as a predominant cause of automobile accidents attributed to
  distracted driving. While there is no doubt that distracted driving
  is dangerous, and increases the risk of being involved in an automobile
  accident, this Note contends that cell phone use does not play
  as prominent a role in distracted driving as is typically portrayed.
  Many other distractive stimuli pose a more significant threat, and
  often occur more regularly than cell phone use. Unlike cell phone use,
  however, these other distractive stimuli have not been characterized
  as negatively, or singled out by legislative bans."

The accident rate can also be
influenced by the increased  amount of drivers as opposed to the
amount of accidents.

It's normalized by the number of miles driven, which means that's taken
into account, in part, as is everything else that is related to accidents.

And it's also hard  to determine how many of
those actual accidents were the result of  distracted driving or
some other factor.

It's not only "hard", it's impossible.

But get this.

Cellphones are demonized, right? (See Uconn cite above, for example).
And cellphones went from 0% to 100% in just a few years.

If they're so bad, why does the reliable accident data not show that?

HINT: They're not so bad after all.

I'd wager distracted drivers  caused a far
higher rate of accidents than others did.

Nobody doubts that. Driving entails handling distractions.
Please see my comment about the good-student discount, for example.

Certainly no one  will
admit they were looking at their Facebook page when they ran a red
light or ran into a pedestrian crossing the road.

I do not disagree that it is nearly impossible, if not impossible, to get
good statistics of the accidents _directly_ caused by cellphone
distraction.

All you can get is a moron claiming that they were involved in one
accident, that the moron felt was caused by (always the _other_ driver) who
was distracted (as if all accidents are all only single-vehicle crashes).

Trust me I'm well aware that most people are incredibly stupid.
Their own arguments make absolutely no sense, except in their heads.

Never does the accurate data ever support their claims, badgolferman.
Yet they believe it. Because they're dunning kruger mount stupid people.

They never check their strongly held belief systems against the facts.

The accident rate is, was and always has been normalized by miles
driven.
>
In summary, there's no question the accident rate shows no blip
during the skyrocketing era of cellphone ownership rates going from
0% to almost 100%.
>
Everyone who is intelligent is aware of that fact.
The only question is why.

 
Facts are often times subjective based upon the people presenting those
facts, especially if those people are the government.  If someone don't
think that's true then they are naive as to the ways of the world.

I already stated that the police skew the cause in the accident data record
(and I showed the Uconn cite which supports that premise indirectly).

But the raw accident data is simply number of accidents divided by miles.

I get it you don't like that data.
But you can't say something that simple is skewed without any evidence.

Right?

Occam's Razor says something that simple isn't skewed.
It says something else.

It says what people believe, may not be correct.
That's why this subject is what it is:
 *It's a myth that cellphone use caused the accident rate to rise in the USA*

Or are you saying that *I* skewed the Census Bureau accident rate data
for each and all of the fifty states since the 1920's?

If so, that's absurd, IMHO.
It's far more likely the data tells us something interesting, is it not?