California’s hand-held cell-phone ban hasn’t reduced crashes

(From the L.A. Times) Think your commute is safer now that California requires drivers to use hands-free cellphones? Maybe not. A new study from the Highway Loss Data Institute released Friday found that the rate of crashes before and after the landmark law took effect in 2008 has not significantly changed.

The research also found that California’s auto accident trends before and after the cellphone law took effect mirror those of neighboring states such as Arizona and Nevada, which don’t have hand-held phone bans.

“This is making us reexamine some of the assumptions,” said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and its affiliate, the data institute. “We’ve all assumed, because we could measure it pretty well, that maybe cellphone use was a bigger distractor than other things, and I think this data shows us that no, it’s not.”

Read more here: California’s hand-held cell-phone ban hasn’t reduced crashes, study says