On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 20:39:54 GMT, "BE" > wrote:

>Your cellphone is killing 2,600 per year, well ok not YOUR cellphone, but
>folks using cellphones. from http://tinyurl.com/6yeam
>

I don't find an article that starts out with "Finally, empirical proof
you can blame chatty 20-somethings for stop-and-go traffic on the way
to work" very credible.


>Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the
>United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human
>Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Notice they didn't tell you how they came up with this number. It's
an estimate based on a whole bunch of assumptions.

>
>Drivers talking on cell phones were 18 percent slower to react to brake
>lights, the new study found. In a minor bright note, they also kept a 12
>percent greater following distance. But they also took 17 percent longer to
>regain the speed they lost when they braked. That frustrates everyone.
>
>"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their
>reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell
>phone," said University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer. "It's
>like instantly aging a large number of drivers."
>
>"Once drivers on cell phones hit the brakes, it takes them longer to get
>back into the normal flow of traffic," Strayer said. "The net result is they
>are impeding the overall flow of traffic."
>
>Accurate reporting ?
>