Data Quoted for Need for Texting Ban Wrong

I looked up the information being supplied to our city councilpersons concerning the texting ban ordinance they will be voting on this coming Tuesday.  In the full agenda of the city council meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 22, under the background section I found this:

According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, distracted driving related crashes caused nearly 5,500 deaths and 450,000 injuries during 2009.  In 2008, based on data received from the Texas Department of Transportation where "Cell/Mobile Phone Use" was listed as a contributing factor in crashes, seventeen percent of those crashes resulted in a fatality or serious injury with an additional 23.4% resulting in injury.

Just looking at this, one might say, "Oh my, we must ban this practice."  But they would be making that comment based on out of context statistics.

These types of inaccurate data representations are what cause law makers and public policy types to institute laws that are baseless and counter productive and can create unintended consequences that cannot be comprehended until after the bad legislation is passed.

Note, that the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration does not say that 5,500 deaths and 450,000 injuries were caused by some act using a cell phone, but were caused by distracted driving.  I would bet that the numbers of accidents involving cell phones probably comes close to what Texas experienced in 2008.
Here are the real numbers.  In 2008, in Texas there were 439,527 accidents.  Of those, 3,188 had cell phone use listed as a contributing factor in the crash.  That equates to less than 1% of the total accidents in Texas (0.77% actual.)  However, driver inattention accidents (not cell phone distractions) accounted for 96,780 accidents or about 22% of all Texas crashes.  And, accidents with a contributing factor being a distraction in the vehicle resulted in 8,914 accidents, or 2.03% of all Texas crashes.

These numbers may still look large to the untrained eye, but maybe these numbers will help you grasp how rare cell phone related accidents really are.  In 2008, the 3,188 crashes that listed cell  phone use as a factor occurred once every 73,586,260 miles driven in Texas.  How's that for a statistic.  See what you can do if you want to produce numbers that favor your argument.  Tell that to the average person who is not familiar with statistics and they would think these accidents almost never occur.

Again, as I have said over and over, it is not about texting or cell phone use.  It is about distracted driving causing accidents.  Now, if the city wants to ban something useful, ban all those things we know are distracting while driving, eating, drinking, smoking, passengers,reading (newspapers, books, maps, etc.) vehicle attached electronic devices, bright lights/signs along highways, and any other thing that distracts today's drivers.

Impossible, and unenforceable, of course it is.    But because some city councilpersons want to over-regulate your life, they will pass their ordinance that will do nothing to lower accident rates or fatalities, but will get the city some revenue.  Oh, I forgot, even the street cops will tell you the proposed ordinance is unenforceable.

Stop the insanity.