All crashes where anyone in the crash, whether they caused it, they were driving, they were a passenger, or whether they were not in a car but were a pedestrian who got hit, and someone died in the crash; is counted as an alcohol-related crash. You can go straight to the NHTSA website and the definition is there. If a stone cold sober tea-totaling MADD member talking on her cell phone loses control of her car and runs over a pedestrian on a sidewalk who had just stepped out of a bar and hailed a cab to go home, then it counts as an alcohol related fatality. Persumably its alcohol related since if he hadn't been impaired he would have known that sidewalk was a dangerous place to be. So the figure cited above is not terribly meaningful.

I'm not saying that drinking and driving is not a problem. If you sift through the rest of NHTSA's figures you can see there is a definite correlation between alcohol in the driver who caused the accident and fatalities. The correlation is weak for low alcohol levels and increases as more drinks are consumed. A vast majority of accidents take place where the BAC is above .10. Another study shows that age also plays a big part. Young people, whose driving is already not terribly good, get much worse at BAC as low as .02.

Let's apply the same standards to cell phone use. If there is an accident and anyone in any of the cars involved was on a cell phone at the time, be they driving or just sitting in the back seat, let's count it as a cell phone related accident. When those figures come rolling in there will be outrage at this senseless slaughter!