Cell phones may increase crash risk 38%
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2015-06-17
Researchers at the Transportation Safety Laboratory of Universite de Montreal recently presented the results of a major epidemiological study on the risks of road accidents and the use of wireless telephones.
Overall, the study shows that both male and female wireless telephone users have a 38% higher risk of accident compared with the non-users of the same sex. Relative risk increases with frequency of wireless phone use; the risk of accident for heavy users (more than 135 calls made per month) is about twice the risk for light users (fewer than 10 calls made per month). These results take into account other accident risk factors, including driver age and the year of the accident, and driving habits, such as kilometers driven annually and night driving.
"Our research shows an association between wireless telephone use and accident risk. It does not constitute a direct demonstration of cause and effect, since there is no direct observation of wireless telephone use and other factors at the time of the accident. However, we did observed a dose- response gradient that lends support to the hypothesis of causation. Heavy users of the cell phone have twice the accident risk of drivers who use the phone infrequently or not at all," noted Dr. Laberge-Nadeau, Director of the Transportation Safety Laboratory.
This study is based on a sample of 36,000 people who filled out a questionnaire and signed a release form, including 12,700 users of wireless telephones and 23,300 non-users. The Laboratory merged the data from the questionnaire with the drivers' records from the Societe de l'assurance automobile du Quebec (SAAQ) and data on wireless phone use provided by the telephone companies. The questionnaire asked about risk exposure, driving habits, opinions on activities that could be harmful to driving, accidents during the past 24 months, and, for wireless telephone users, some questions about usage.
This made it possible to obtain the following opinions on wireless telephone use while driving: one male user out of three (36%) and one female user out of two (50.9%) indicated that talking on a wireless telephone interfered significantly with their driving. Of all those polled, both men and women, and wireless telephone users and non-users alike, only 3% or fewer felt that talking with passengers or listening to radio, tapes or CDs interfered with driving. Another Canadian study found that drivers were equally distracted when using hands-free or hand-held phones.
The Transportation Safety Laboratory brings together researchers from various fields of expertise who are interested in the human, socio-economical and physical aspects of transportation safety. The Laboratory is part of the Centre for Transportation Research, a multi-disciplinary centre at Universite de Montreal and its two affiliated schools, the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales.
* * * See a Drivers.com article summarizing recent research on car phone use.
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