Originally Posted by
genec
The sad thing with straight number statistics is that they don't reflect the actual cause and effect situations.
Undoubtably.
Originally Posted by
The Human Car
Agreed on the risk compensation. IMHO fatalities that were due to the lack of seat belts or air bags (in years past) are being replaced by higher speed distracted driving crashes.
Just to re-emphasize, I concur that distracted driving is a real problem. I think that if we tell people to not "text and drive" or similar without changing the fundamental decision to pay attention to one's driving -- or designing roads that allow people to do so -- that people will simply substitute to other distractions/daydreaming/risks.
As a side note, casual conversations with some engineering types at Ford suggested that based on laboratory tests by far the biggest effect on safety in a crash is wearing a seat belt. So other external changes offseting a dramatic increase in distracted driving may be an unlikely explanation of the data.