The Superintendent of Motor Vehicles gave an interview reported on CBC’s website where he stated that he hasn’t obtained reliable data to show that the prohibition on using mobile devices has saved any lives. He says that the law works. He just can’t prove it.
It’s a reasonable statement because, like the IRP scheme, you can’t accurately identify cause and effect. There are simply too many variables at play.
Of course, there is a court challenge to the IRP scheme and no court challenge to the laws prohibiting the use of mobile phones. So the Government is more than willing to give us false information about the effectiveness of the IRP scheme. There is no point in misleading us about the laws prohibiting the use of mobile phones.
And besides, admitting you can’t be certain about one cause-and-effect scenario may enhance your credibility when you speak of a different cause-and-effect scenario.
The story goes on to say that there was a 20% decline in 2011 in the number of fatal accidents from distracted driving. In the CBC story the numbers aren’t provided. A drop from 5 to 4 would represent a 20% decline. It would be useful to have more information.
One difficulty is showing with some degree of certainty that distracted driving was in fact the cause of a fatal crash. If a moose steps in front of your car and you were on the phone, and you die in the accident, can anyone say that the phone call was the cause? In some cases you might have died either way. Would you have avoided that collision that killed you if you weren’t on the phone?
And then there’s the time of the accident and the time of using the device. If your phone is mid text and they find you dead after striking a pole, it might seem pretty certain that you died for a text message. But if you hung up a minute before, the police, when looking at your phone may conclude you were still using it when the accident occurred.
In our experience timing of accidents is never precise.
One unexpected problem with mobile phone bans is that people ignore the prohibition and covertly use their devices while driving. If you’re reading a text message while driving is it safer to hold your phone up in your line of sight of the road, or to hold it down in your lap?
This is an interesting problem. From our office windows we can see that roughly one in three people who stop at the lights on Beatty at Robson are either reading their messages, typing, or holding their phone to their ear. Most of the people who are texting are holding it low to avoid detection. When the lights change they sit for a moment until either a driver behind honks at them or they glance up and see that that the vehicles ahead are already well down the road. Would it be safer if they simply held their phones up toward their windshield?
The Swedish government came to the conclusion that people would just ignore the ban on using mobile devices so there was no point in prohibiting their use. The Swedish National Road and Transport Institute concluded that the benefits of mobile a phone ban “generally dissipate within a year or so” of legislation being introduced.
Interesting also is that with regards to the use of mobile phones and driving the Swedes have noted no effect on crash risk.
Important to remember is the Swedes, who invented the 3-point seat belt, introduced 4-wheel disc brakes on all cars and came up with the idea of rear facing seats for infants, have a long history of being obsessed with vehicle safety. So it seems strange and incongruous that they would decline to prohibit the use of mobile devices because don’t find them unsafe and they don’t think they can curb the behaviour in any event.
The Swedes do their research. In BC our Superintendent of Motor Vehicles purports to rely on faith. He says the law works but he can’t prove it. The statistics for the second year (when the Swedes say the effectiveness of the legislation is gone) are not provided by the BC Government, but they are certainly in their possession. Why are they not releasing this information? Do the statistics run counter to their beliefs?
Does the law work? We don’t know. It seems logical to conclude that using your mobile device is a distraction from the important task of driving. From our own observations we can see that people using their cell phones are less attentive to driving. In many cases the use of the mobile device means that they are causing a risk to others.
The Superintendent of Motor Vehicles believes that the prohibition on using mobile devices will eventually change people’s behaviour. The Swedish National Road and Transport Institute have concluded that the effectiveness of such legislation dissipates within a year or so of its introduction.
It will be interesting to see if faith wins the day over social research. Check back in 15 years and the data might provide the answer for you.