- cross-posted to:
- acab@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- acab@quokk.au
A new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study compared smartphone telematics with police reports for almost 17,000 crashes in Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio, and Texas. After excluding passive screen activity such as an untouched navigation display, the data still show a huge gap: phones detected active use before crashes far more often than police documented it.
As someone who has driven both before and after phones became ubiquitous, you are right, there is absolutely some conflation going on here. With that said, people are also absolutely driving more poorly as a result of distractions. The way that people brake and accelerate is exceedingly telling. I wish phones were 100% barred from cars.
Don’t forget my favorite telltale: the gradual drift into other lanes followed by a sudden jerk back into their own (or suddenly switching quickly to the one they were drifting into as a kind of “I meant to do that” cover move).
I’ve definitely witnessed a few people do that swerve, and then do it again a few seconds later because they didn’t put their fucking phone down. Comparing them to drunk drivers is absolutely correct.
If they look like drunk drivers, but it’s daytime, usually you will find them texting.
My favorite aspect of 2026 is how little time people offer before honking at a green light. Everyone knows that people are fucking around on their phones so it’s rare to see a light left green for more than 2 seconds without a little *bep*
True, but to be fair a good number of lights seem to be timed ridiculously - presumably to allow cops to hand out more tickets.