Phones Track Everything Except Their Role in Car Accidents

Distracted driving is a growing problem, according to safety experts. Yet there is still no definitive database on the number of accidents or deaths caused by these accidents.

Cell phones can track what we let's say and write, where we go, what we buy and what we search for on the Internet. But they still aren't used to track one of the biggest threats to public health: crashes caused by drivers distracted by phones.

More a decade later federal and state authorities. Governments recognized the dangers of cell phone use while driving and began enacting laws to stop it, but no definitive database remains on the number of accidents or deaths caused by distraction. of the cell phone. Safety experts say current estimates likely underestimate a worsening problem.

The lack of clear data comes as crashes rise. Police-recorded car crashes increased 16% between 2020 and 2021, from 14,400 per day to 16,700, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 2021, nearly 43,000 Americans died in crashes, a 16-year high.

In 2021, only 377 fatal wrecks, or just under 1%. , were reported to have involved an accident. driver distracted by cell phone, traffic agency says. About 8% of the 2.5 million non-fatal crashes that year involved a cell phone, according to highway agency data.

But those numbers don't not reflect all the distractions caused by cell phones; they only include accidents in which a police report specifically mentions such a distraction. Often, safety experts say, cell phone use goes unmentioned in these reports because it usually relies on the driver to admit to a distraction, a witness to identify it, or, in even rarer cases, from the use of cell phone recordings or other phone analyzes that definitively show the distraction.

Police can access cellphone records, but the process is cumbersome and privacy laws require a subpoena. Even then, further analysis must be performed to link a driver's phone activity to the time of an accident.

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