Re: State Farm files patent for system to suppress calls and text while driving

knuttle wrote on Sun, 9 Jun 2024 14:50:58 -0400 :

Laws do not change behavior.

Again, I've shown the reliable cites in the past, where it was shown in the
twenty-five year period which included cellphone laws being enacted one by
one in many USA states, the laws had no first-order effect on safety.

Since the twenty-five year period aggregate studies included *all*
driver-related motor-vehicle safety laws being enacted, you can't pull out
seatbelt laws versus cellphone laws versus baby-seat laws, etc.

But what they concluded from looking at probably thousands of studies (I
don't remember how many they looked at) there was zero effect on safety
from enacting and/or enforcing the laws - in every state in the USA.

Strangely though, they found one second-order effect, which was in length
of hospital stay - which they noted was the only statistically valid result
of their study of all fifty states - but it was only, as I recall, in
number of hours spent in the hospital following accidents.

Note that fatality rates were wholly unaffected by ticketing laws.