On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 23:01:29 +0000 (UTC), ceg
wrote:

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 14:04:23 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

Also, I strongly question most of the studies that purport to show how
cell phones "distract' people. They usually put a person in a
simulator, tell them they MUST talk on a cell phone, and then when THEY
know it's the most inopportune time for a 'surprise' they flash a cow on
the road ahead and the simulating driver hits it. They ignore that in
the REAL world, most drivers are not simply stuck on their cell phone
completely ignoring everything around them as if in a trance waiting for
a guy in the back seat to hit the button for EMERGENCY at the worst
possible moment.

I agree with you that the studies that show distracted driving to be
tremendously dangerous *must* be flawed, for a bunch of reasons, but, one
of them is that it just makes the paradox *worse*!

Let's assume, for a moment, that driving while distracted by cellphone
use *is* as dangerous as the studies show.

Well then, the spike in accidents, as you noted, should at least be
*visible* (it should actually be tremendously visible!).

But it's not.
Hence the paradox.
Where are the accidents?

From my standpoint, there are essentially no new accidents. One
distraction has replaced another. It's even possible that people who
in the past would have fallen asleep did not today because they were
on their cell phone and that engagement kept them awake. But no one
knows.... How do you quantify and categorize accidents that didn't
happen?