Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

Abouk, Rahi; Adams, Scott

doi:10.1257/app.5.2.179

Cited by 80 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…We include unemployment rate and per capita income to take into account the fact that less economic activity causes fewer drivers to be on the roads, therefore, reducing the risk of accidents (Cotti and Tefft 2011); and include population, to capture population density and traffic congestion effects (Abouk and Adams 2013), to take into account that this variable may increase the likelihood of accidents. 8…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This control has also been used by Abouk andAdams (2013) and, recently, by Cheng (2014) who also analyzed the effects of bans. Our results, presented in Table 9, are precisely the same when not considering gas prices in our set of controls.…”

Section: Robustness Checksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found no evidence that the ban led to a reduction in traffic accidents. Also, Abouk and Adams (2013), using vehicular fatality data from across the US and standard difference-in-differences techniques, found that bans appear moderately successful at reducing single-vehicle, single-occupant accidents when applied and enforced as a primary offense. This effect, however, dissipated shortly, with accidents returning to former levels within a few months.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are handheld cell phone and texting bans really effective in reducing fatalities?

Rocco

Sampaio

2015

Empir Econ

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This paper aims at evaluating if texting and handheld cell phone bans are effective in reducing the number of fatalities occurring in motor vehicle crashes using US county-level data. In the past two decades, many debates have been going on among policy makers regarding the impact of using mobile phone devices while driving. This political debate is partially motivated by the lack of clear empirical evidence on the relationship between cell phone use, bans and driving performance. Our results show that states that enacted primary cell phone bans experienced a significant reduction in the number of fatalities. Primary texting bans also affected fatalities, but this effect was significantly smaller than that estimated for handheld cell phone bans. This is an important and contradicting result, given most of the legislative activity in 2012 focused on text messaging behind the wheel, considered the most dangerous of the distracted driving activities. Additionally, we looked at how heterogeneous were these effects among states that enacted such bans. We observed that all states benefited from the ban in terms of fatality reduction; however, some were highly affected (such as CA and DC) and some affected in small scale (such as UT and WA).

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Robustness Checksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are handheld cell phone and texting bans really effective in reducing fatalities?

Rocco

Sampaio

2015

Empir Econ

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“…Most studies thus far have focused on the effect of a ban on cell phone usage, but this is difficult to translate into such a ban's effect on crashes (McCartt and Geary, 2004;McCartt and Hellinga, 2007). Abouk and Adams, 2013;Ferdinand et al, 2014;and Rocco and Sampaio, 2016, use national crash data to detect effects, which could be a method for future evaluation.…”

Section: Measuring Effectivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Costs and Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Motor Vehicle–Related Injuries and Deaths: Supplement to Tool Documentation

Ecola¹,

Ringel²,

Connor³

et al. 2018

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Limited Print and Electronic Distribution RightsThis document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html.The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/TL144z2Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2018 RAND CorporationR® is a registered trademark.iii PrefaceIn December 2015, RAND Corporation researchers produced an online tool called the Motor Vehicle Prioritizing Interventions and Cost Calculator for States (MV PICCS) for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The purpose of this tool, which is available to the public at www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/calculator/ (CDC, 2015), is to support states and local communities in making evidence-based resource allocation decisions relating to the implementation of effective evidence-based interventions for preventing motor vehicle-related injury.In 2017, the team completed an update to the tool as part of a project led by the National Governors Association, funded by CDC, to work with states and governors' offices to strengthen strategies to reduce highway and traffic injuries and fatalities. The work includes updates to some of the data used, updates to some of the assumptions and methods to derive the data, and a full redesign of the user interface of the tool. This report documents which data, assumptions, and methods we updated. The audience for this report is the users of the online tool, state and local health and safety officials seeking information on the effectiveness and costs of the 14 motor vehicle injury prevention interventions included in MV PICCS.The more complete documentation, which includes discussion of how we selected interventions for inclusion in the tool and how we programmed the tool, is available in Ringel et al., 2015. RAND researchers have also undertaken related work that used the data in the tool to conduct policy analyses of traffic safety spending. This work was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The main report is Ecola, Batorsky, and Ringel, 2015. Fou...

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“…33 Abouk and Adams (2013) examined the effect of texting bans on the traffic fatality rate per vehicle miles traveled as a robustness check. 34 The log-odds ratio of traffic fatalities takes into account the discrete nature of a traffic fatality at the individual level (Ruhm 1996).…”

Section: Robustness Checksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Per se drugged driving laws and traffic fatalities

Anderson

Rees

2015

International Review of Law and Economics

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Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

Cited by 80 publications

References 13 publications

Are handheld cell phone and texting bans really effective in reducing fatalities?

Are handheld cell phone and texting bans really effective in reducing fatalities?

Costs and Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Motor Vehicle–Related Injuries and Deaths: Supplement to Tool Documentation

Per se drugged driving laws and traffic fatalities

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Texting Bans and Fatal Accidents on Roadways: Do They Work? Or Do Drivers Just React to Announcements of Bans?

Cited by 80 publications

References 13 publications

Are handheld cell phone and texting bans really effective in reducing fatalities?

Are handheld cell phone and texting bans really effective in reducing fatalities?

Costs and Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Motor Vehicle&ndash;Related Injuries and Deaths: Supplement to Tool Documentation

Per se drugged driving laws and traffic fatalities

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Costs and Effectiveness of Interventions to Reduce Motor Vehicle–Related Injuries and Deaths: Supplement to Tool Documentation