"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
...

On Mon, 17 Aug 2015 08:46:26 +0100, "Gareth Magennis"
wrote:

Well it may not be a sound logic to assume that 1.5% is a "small" number.
Stand at the side of a motorway and count 100 cars passing. It won't take
long.

These statistics simply show that 1.5 of those passing cars contains a
driver on the phone, and that this number has not increased since 2003.

One such study simply counted the number of people that drove by with
BlueGoof headsets screwed into their ear and simply assumed that if
they were wearing the headset, they must be talking while driving. A
few of my friends wear theirs almost full time, because they don't
want to fumble for the headset while moving.

My guess(tm) is that the number of cellphone using drivers, in heavy
traffic, is much higher. From cell phone provider logs and
statistical summaries, it's known that cell phone use tends to follow
traffic congestion patterns with peaks during the rush hour. I can
see the increased "hash" in the 850/1900 MHz bands on my service
monitor during rush hour. (My office is near a major freeway
exchange). The assumption is that most of the calls come from drivers
either on the freeways, or the nearby roads, both of what are
typically barely moving. I wanted to do a time lapse video showing
the effect, but my IFR-1500 currently has a very sick power supply.

The problem is that in heavy traffic (rush hour), the traffic isn't
moving very fast. The opportunity to do some real damage or produce a
fatality is quite limited. At worst, a minor rear-end fender bender.
The fatalities seem to be more on the open highways, uncrowded
streets, and intersections, where traffic is light and moving at
considerable speed. Counting cars in such situation will probably
yield considerably less than the claimed 1.5% simply because there far
fewer automobiles. Therefore, I would guess(tm) that the 1.5% is an
average between congested traffic with high cell phone use, and light
traffic with light cell phone use.

If someone counted distracted cell phone drivers that are driving fast
enough to do some real damage (e.g. 25 mph), methinks the percentages
will be very low. Yet those are the ones that are going to kill
innocent people or themselves.

--
Jeff Liebermann




This from the UK Government survey
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...rveys-2014.pdf


The
mobile phone survey
was carried out across 60 sites in England within
four different areas (South East, Manchester, Newcastle/Durham and Norfolk)
and 30 sites in Scotland.

For the
mobile phone survey
, a mixture of sites with
stationary and free flowing traffic were used.

Roadside observation methods were used to collect the data with teams of
staff visiting each
site. For the
mobile phone survey
, observations were made of drivers of cars, vans, taxis,
lorries, buses, minibuses and coaches.

At moving sites, observations were made of the gender and
mobile phone use of the driver, but due to the speed of the passing vehicles
it was not possible to
assess the age of drivers. Details of all the variables collected at the
stationary and moving sites
can be found in the methodology note.
Surveys took place in both morning (07:30 to 12:00) and afternoon sessions
(13:30 to 18:00)
with a half hour observation period every hour in each session. Sites were
surveyed in half day
sessions
1
(either the morning or afternoon sessions). A number of sites were
re-surveyed at the
weekend so differences in mobile phone use or seat belt use between weekdays
and weekends
could be assessed. There are a number of limitations to the data collection
method which are
outlined in the methodology note.



In 2014, 1.6 per cent of
drivers in England and Scotland
were observed using a hand-
held mobile phone whilst driving. The majority of these drivers were using a
phone in their
hand
rather than holding it to their
ear
; 1.1 per cent of drivers in England and Scotland were
observed holding a phone in their hand compared with 0.5 per cent observed
holding the phone
to their ear. This suggests that most mobile phone usage whilst driving was
for the purposes of
sending or receiving a text or using social media rather than making a call.





Gareth.