Paul M. Cook wrote
chris wrote

The study make several explicit regression models to test whether
different factors have an affect on car crash related hospitalisations.
They found that texting bans, handheld bans, seatbelt laws and graduate
licensing laws all had a measurable and significant decrease in the
hospitalisation rates.

What's strange is that they found no relationship whatsoever to
accidents.

Not really that strange if texting results in worse accidents.

Methinks there is a smell emanating from the data.

There certainly is with the claim that gas prices
have no effect when that must affect traffic volumes.

For example, just having a cellphone could mean that you can call for
an ambulance which will take you to the hospital even if you were
just scratched up a bit.

But when almost everyone has a cellphone now, whether
there is a ban on texting while driving wont have any effect
on whether you can call an ambulance after an accident.

If you didn't have the cell phone, you wouldn't easily have that
ambulance,

That's only true of single vehicle accidents where no
one else stops to see if you are ok after the accident.

which means you wouldn't have that ride to the hospital.

You might just walk home, or drive home, or take a longer
time to get "official" help (like from police or ambulance).

Or get someone else with a cellphone to call an ambulance.

So, BECAUSE they can't find ANY relationship to accidents,
they can only find a relationship to hospital visits,

Which must have some relationship to how serious the accident is.

but that could just be BECAUSE it was convenient.

No.

Any study that can't find any relationship to accidents is
nearly worthless.

But it clearly finds a relationship to the more
serious accidents that produce hospitalisation.

A more important criticism of the study is that
no relationship was found with gas prices which
is hard to credit given that that must affect traffic
volume and so the accident rate, unless the serious
accidents that do involve hospitalisation mostly
involve single vehicle accidents which is hard to
accept.