Does Australia have similar cellphone "related" accident rates as the United States

[Algeria Horan]

Interesting facts that give insight to the answer to the question in the subject line are at this Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association site:

This is a verbatim quote: "If using mobile phones is significantly dangerous then we could expect to see a dramatic increase in traffic accidents in the last decade. In fact, the reverse is true." The AMTA indicates that a tenth of 1 percent of Australian crashes are "related" to illegal cellphone use:

"Between 1997 and 2011 there were around 50,000 crashes each year on NSW roads and less than 0.1 per cent of all crashes were related to illegal hand-held mobile phone use."

Two caveats:

- We need to know what they mean by "related", and,

- We need to explore what they mean by "illegal" cellphone use.

You'll note that they say about Australia the same things I've been saying about the USA, which is: "Almost all Australian drivers now own a mobile phone, but the road fatality reduction has continued despite the exponential increase in mobile phone ownership over the last two decades. "

They do point out an interesting quirk of the statistics, which I hadn't thought about, but which makes sense at face value: "the dramatic increase in use of mobiles also increases the chance of a fatal crash occurring when a driver is using a mobile phone (both legally or illegally) and this may or may not be a causal association."

There is one other interesting statistic: "A recent analysis of 340 serious casualty crashes in Victoria and NSW between 2000 and 2011, using data gleaned from forensic examination of crash scenes and anonymous interviews with drivers has found that in 0.9 per cent of crashes the driver was *using* a mobile phone."

Caveat:

- Using a cellphone does not mean the accident was caused by using it!

They summarize the situation in Australia as:

"While mobile phones are a real distraction in the car and their use can result in serious accidents, real life accident data indicates that mobile phone use does not contribute significantly to crashes or fatalities."

[Algeria Horan]

Yes, we've heard your fantastic fabrications before...

You've already many times intimated that mathematically clever aliens have exactly negated the astoundingly huge number of accidents that your model predicts, exactly matching not only the date that cellphone ownership started to rise, but also exactly matching the exact very steep tangential rise, and even precisely adjusting their clever negating effects by forming a plateau at exactly the point where cellphone ownership reached 100%.

They are indeed clever those aliens you suggest who manipulated the record, such that there isn't ANYTHING whatsoever in the accident record which shows any effect whatsoever.

Mind you, your clever aliens still have our damn bomber and we want it back!

[Rod Speed]

Algeria Horan wrote

Just how many of you are there between those ears, f****it troll ?

Not a single fabrication from anyone by you, f****it troll.

[Gordon Levi]

I'm sure you posted all this to make a point. What is it?

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Algeria Horan:

I have always wondered how the people who gather statistics determine whether a driver in a crash was using a cell phone.

It would seem that only a vanishingly-small percentage of drivers would own up to cell phone use when being interviewed for an accident report.

That would seem to leave the police finding the cell phone, determining it's ID or phone number, looking up use in the phone company's database, and correlating time of calls with the moment of the accident.... all of which also seem to be of vanishingly-small probability.

Am I missing something?

[nospam]

that's how they do it, and the time of the crash is not always known.

no.

[Rod Speed]

PeteCresswell wrote

Its not that hard with voice calls, bit harder with SMS, particularly if they are preparing the first one and haven't sent it yet.

Sure, but that isnt the only way to know that.

Yes and that isnt that hard to do. And to do it the other way in this country. The authoritys do know what phone SIMs you have unless you go out of your way to get an anonymous one which is rather harder to do in this country.

Fraid not.

Yep.

[The Real Bev]

The record on the phone itself? Mine gives the date, but not the time. Is that generic or just me?

[John McGaw]

Actually, determining the approximate time of the crash should be possible: note the phone's present location in the telco's records and then work backwards to determine when it stopped moving -- the crash happened sometime after the last recorded movement. Not precise but it is a better guess than none at all.

[nospam]

not only is it just a guess but determining motion is very imprecise, particularly in rural areas where there aren't very many cell sites.

also, if someone used their phone 30 seconds before a crash, the phone was not the cause.

it's also possible that a *passenger* was using the driver's phone so that the driver would not be distracted, which means even if the phone was in use at the exact time of the crash, it wasn't a factor.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Maybe. If you were arguing with your wife and hung up 30 seconds ago good chance you are still distracted.

Possible, but if the person on the other end tell the police the call ended mid sentence . . .

A young lady was killed on the street behind me. She crashed head on mid text. That was an easy one.

[nospam]

how is that any different than if you got into a huge fight before you even left the house or work? you'd be distracted for the entire drive.

either way, it's not *proof* of driver distraction.

not only that, but everyone has stuff on their mind while driving because driving is boring.

that's different.

if all you have are call logs with no exact time of the crash, you can't be sure what happened.

that one might have been, but others are not.

[Quert Black]

No, iphones have both the time and date of calls and texts.

Obviously others that use your model phone get the same result.

[nospam]

you have a shitty phone. i haven't seen a phone that doesn't give the call time *and* duration in a really, really long time.

[Algeria Horan]

Rod, I'm gonna assume you are an adult, and speak to you like an adult would.

I show the facts, as you can read them yourself. You say that the facts are distorted by some unknown force or forces.

We both realize that this "can" happen, just as a WWII bomber "can" be on the moon.

But it's almost impossible "to" happen. So for you to constantly insist that it *did* happen, is, in essence, a fantastic fabrication.

You don't prove it. You just say it. You may as well continue to argue that the WWII Bomber is still on the moon!

Do you supply any proof of your fantastic assertion? Nope.

How am I going to prove to you that a WWII bomber is NOT on the moon? I can't.

And that's exactly what you rely your *entire* rebuttal upon.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I did not say proof, but a possibility. If you left the house in a rage, driving is not boring. My only point is, had you not used the phone and got into (or continued) the argument you'd have a different frame of mind.

Another false argument is talking on the phone is no different than talking to a person in the car. It is. Also depends on the conversation. To give a quick call "I'm on my way home" takes away less brain power that to try and give technical instructions on how to install a piece of equipment.

When talking to the person next to you it is easy to stop talking if traffic suddenly needs your attention but not as easy on the phone. Human nature of how we work.

I'm not against using phone while driving, but you have to be careful and at times NOT use it. Every situation of both traffic and call are different. Most of us have seen distracted driving from phone use. Like the driver in the left lane going 10 under the speed limit with phone in hand.

[nospam]

you can't charge a person with a crime based on a possibility. you can't base statistics on possibilities either.

you *must* have proof.

driving is very boring. people sometimes fall asleep while driving.

it's not false at all.

talking to someone sitting next to you is exactly the same as talking to someone through a phone. in both cases, your mind is focused on the conversation more than it is the traffic.

same with a phone call.

simply say "can't talk" and toss the phone on the seat.

just like anything.

who is to say he woudn't have done that without a phone?

stupid drivers have existed since long before there ever were cellphones.

what about the person driving with an unfolded paper map, or reading the newspaper, or eating breakfast and drinking coffee?

they even made pads of paper to stick on the windshield so you could

*take notes* while driving.

[Rod Speed]

Algeria Horan wrote

That is a bare faced like with that shit being discussed.

Not a single fact was shown at all, you silly little pathological liar.

More of your bare faced lies/pathetic excuse for a troll.

What I ACTUALLY said was that the fatality rate keeps dropping significantly due to a variety of factors like better roads, particularly with fully divided freeways, and due to much better cars that make accident survival much more likely and that that is what swamps any increase in fatalitys due to the few fools like you actually stupid enough to use their phones while driving.

[Algeria Horan]

You're approaching the problem the hard way. The facts don't make the news because the facts aren't scary.

With cellphone use almost ubiquitous in both Australia and in the USA, nearly 100% of all crashes "involve" cellphones - just like nearly 100% of all crashes involved people wearing socks.

They do it anonymously, as reported in the papers I already cited, but even so, you're approaching the problem in the wrong direction.

It's like you're trying to prove the existence of the Loch Ness Monster by finding people who took pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, which you must concede is an unreliable approach by all accounts.

You're missing the accidents.

Where are the accidents? They don't exist.

The record in both Australia and in the United States shows that extremely clearly!

These are facts which Rod Speed intimates that mysteriously clever aliens must have manipulated so as to EXACTLY cancel out the astoundingly huge increase in accidents he fabricated in his own mind must have occurred:

If you're asking _why_ the accident rate, in the real world, isn't affected one bit by the explosion of cellphones, it's NOT because people aren't using them.

People are using cellphones, for millions and millions of miles driven!

"the _use_ of cellphones is consistently at about 2% for texting and at abuot 5% for handheld use while driving (with visible-headset use roughly around half of a percent)"

The most obvious reason why cellphone use isn't causing accidents is so simple, most people don't want to believe it.

The reason is simply that the additional distraction of cellphone use is simply added to an already long list of (far more important) distractions, as the NHTSA says so themselves:

..

So what we have is the cellphone is no more distracting than talking to a passenger: Examining the Impact of Cell Phone Conversations on Driving Using Meta-Analytic Techniques

I realize all this doesn't make the news, simply because none of what I'm telling you is the slightest bit scary. And not scary doesn't make news.

But you have to read more than the "scary" news to understand boring facts.

[Algeria Horan]

While most people only care about fantasy, I only care about facts.

Both in Australia, and in the United States, the fact is that cellphones aren't any more distracting than talking to a passenger, which means that cellphones are just another distraction added to an already long list of (more distracting) distractions.

Says so right here: "NHTSA Distracted Driving 2014 Summary of Statistical Findings"

The result of adding yet another distraction to an already long list of distractions is not even measurable in the real world!

Fact is the _use_ of cellphones while driving in the USA is consistently at about 2% for texting and at abuot 5% for handheld use while driving (with visible-headset use roughly around half of a percent):

That means, even though millions of miles have been driven in the USA with the user looking directly at cellphones (texting) or talking on a cellphone, the accident rate in both Australia and in the United States has not been affected one bit by the utter explosion of cellphone use in both countries.

Says so in the OP, and says so right here for the USA:

More of the same can be found here:

Fact is, anyone who _thinks_ cellphones "cause" accidents, probably also believes that a WWII Bomber _was_ found on the moon!