Note: This study found no significant biological effects under its experimental conditions. We include all studies for scientific completeness.
Car phones and car crashes: an ecologic analysis.
Min ST, Redelmeier DA · 1998
View Original AbstractThis population-level study couldn't detect cellular phone effects on driving safety, but such broad analyses have inherent limitations in identifying real risks.
Plain English Summary
Researchers analyzed car accident data from Toronto between 1984-1993 to see if cellular phone use correlated with increased crashes. They found that areas with the biggest increases in collision rates actually had the smallest increases in phone usage. The study concluded that cellular phones' effects on driving safety are too small to detect using this type of population-level analysis.
Study Details
Some countries have regulations against using a cellular telephone while driving. We used ecologic analysis to evaluate cellular telephone use and motor vehicle collisions in a city without such regulations.
We studied locations in Toronto, Ontario (n=75) that were hazardous (total colli- sions=3,234) and t...
Locations with the largest increases in collision rates tended to have the smallest increases in est...
The effects of cellular telephones on driving ability are small relative to the biases in ecologic analysis. Claims from industry, which argue that cellular telephones are not dangerous based on ecologic analysis, can be misleading in the policy debate about whether to regulate cellular telephone use while driving.
Show BibTeX
@article{st_1998_car_phones_and_car_3247,
author = {Min ST and Redelmeier DA},
title = {Car phones and car crashes: an ecologic analysis.},
year = {1998},
url = {https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6990274/},
}