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correlation: relation of two or more things or parts
prohibition: the action of forbidding something, especially by law
intoxicated: inebriated; drunk
fatalities: deaths
ACtiVitY 3.3
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5 “The expectation would be that as cellphone use has skyrocketed we would see a correlation in the number of accidents, but that hasn’t happened,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association.
6 Adkins said the association believes that states should simply enforce their current cellphone laws, if any, and wait for further research to better understand exactly how much of a role cellphone use plays in automobile accidents.
7 “We know it’s distracting, we know it increases the likelihood of a crash,” Adkins said. “It just hasn’t shown up in data in a lot of cases—in other words, it’s hard to prove that a crash was caused because someone was on their cellphone.”
8 Proponents of cellphone restrictions—whether total bans or prohibition of handheld phones—can cite some studies to back up their positions.
9 A 2005 study published in the British Medical Journal looked at crash data for 456 cellphone subscribers in Perth, Australia, who had an auto accident that required medical attention. The study, which essentially confirmed a similar 1997 study conducted in Toronto, concluded that drivers talking on their phones were about four times more likely to be involved in an accident than those who were not on the phone.
10 Another highly publicized 2006 study from the University of Utah concluded that drivers who talked on cellphones were as impaired as drivers who were intoxicated at the legal blood-alcohol limit of 0.08. The study, however, found that using hands-free devices did little to improve drivers’ performances.
11 There is some evidence suggesting state and local bans have caused some drivers to talk less while on the road.
12 This month, California’s Office of Traffic Safety released the results of a study showing a sharp decrease in the number of accidents caused by cellphone use that resulted in death or injury.
13 Researchers tracked the number of accident reports that listed cellphone use as a factor during the two-year periods before and after the 2008 passage of a statewide ban on handheld devices. The study concluded that while overall traffic fatalities of all kinds dropped by 22 percent, fatalities caused by drivers who were talking on a handheld phone at the time of the crash dropped nearly 50 percent. Similar declines were found for drivers using hands-free devices.
14 The study followed the agency’s 2011 survey of more than 1,800 drivers that found that only about 10 percent of drivers reported that they regularly talked on the phone while driving—down from 14 percent from the previous year’s survey. In addition, the survey saw increases in the number of people who said they rarely or never use their cellphone behind the wheel.
15 Those surveyed, however, overwhelmingly believed that hands-free devices made cellphone use safer, a perception that runs counter to research showing such tools do little to reduce the distraction.
16 “If there is an advantage, it’s only because a person may have two hands on the wheel, but most people drive with one hand all the time anyway,” said Chris Cochran, spokesman for the Office of Traffic Safety. “In reality, it’s the conversation, not the phone itself.”
Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-26/news/ct-met-cell- phone-safety-studies-20120326_1_handheld-cellphones-cellphone-restrictions- cellphone-subscribers
80 SpringBoard® English Language Development grade 8
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