As more states consider controls on cell-phone use in vehicles and Congress mulls a nationwide texting-while-driving ban, a study released Friday suggests the bans have not reduced the number of accidents. The Highway Loss Data Institute compared insurance claims in four states that have bans with areas where drivers can talk freely and found no significant difference.
“The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced handheld phone use and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk,” said Adrian Lund, HLDI president.
The institute is an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an influential nonprofit agency funded by the auto industry that crash-tests new cars to provide safety ratings for insurance companies and consumers.
Bans against handheld cell-phone use are in effect in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The survey wasn’t intended to undermine such laws, but to point out that they may not have teeth.
The studies looked at claims in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C., both before and after the bans went into effect and compared them with claims in neighboring states with no ban. This method was intended to take into account factors not related to the bans, such as seasonal and economic variations and driving patterns.
The data go back to 2001, when New York adopted the nation’s first ban.
A previous IIHS study looked at drivers’ phone records and found that drivers using the phone were four times more likely to be in a crash. That makes the findings of the latest study something of a paradox.
“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,” said Lund, who is president of both…