Was skunked (sort of) at the WSMA this weekend. The WSMA dived head first into the culture wars by voting to officially be in favor of an extremely restrictive gun initiative. It gelded its own members when they talk to legislators on legislation day by not allowing them to talk about anything but the party line, despite Senator Joe Fains admonition against such behavoir. Finally it voted to have all its members charged as criminals for talking on cell phones while driving, despite my efforts and my testimony below. When the Republicans ignore them this year, after many of us warned against going into the culture wars, I will get to repeat my 4 favorite words..... Here is my testimony: The problem with this resolution is that it fails to look at the data or ignores it entirely. SMS texting exploded from 2005 through 2011 when it peaked. Simultaneously, highway death rates fell during this same time. When SMS texting fell ( partially as a result of similar initiatives) the highway death rate climbed. The simple scientific method seems to reject the hypothesis that SMS texting is dangerous while driving. Where is the explosion in deaths that have occurred with the explosion of SMS texting? why, when SMS texting declined, did highway death rates increase markedly? The problem with the logic used by anti-texting advocates is that they are engaged in The glaziers fallacy. They are missing opportunity costs ( or hidden benefits). They are missing the accidents that did not happen and focusing on the ones that did happen. These decreased deaths occur because texting individuals drive more slowly while texting, they do not drive quickly to meetings for which they are late and instead text, they do not drive around parking lots and other areas frantically looking for their friends and family, they even drive less. This gives a comparative advantage to high use of SMS texting in preventing highway deaths. Here are the data: 2005 highway death rate was 43,510 deaths by 2011 these deaths had plummeted to 32,479. By the end of 2012 ( as anti texting laws kicked in) it had already climbed to 33,561 deaths resulting in nearly 1,082 extra deaths due at least in part to this do-gooder legislation. the SMS volume BTW went from 1.005 trillion messages in 2008 to 2.304 trillion messages in 2011 before falling to 2.190 trillion messages in 2012. If this were a scientific article, we would conclude that the overall mortality of SMS texting seems to point to a benefit to its use. Certainly, texting has not been shown, in the overall population to decrease overall highway safety. Further study is needed to tease out this interplay. I strongly recommend rejecting this resolution given that the data does not support it. William Monie Bauer, MD en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... marketingcharts... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... Adding to my earlier comment which I can not edit: Another example of driving less would be that their spouses and others can add to their to do list while they are mobile and picking up kids or doing other errands (it turns out mothers with teenage and younger children are the heaviest drivers according to Harvey Dent), also if plans change both parties can coordinate better, leading to more precise driving.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 22:56:28 +0000
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