Car Accidents and Mobile Phones
There’s an interesting piece of work by Chinese and US researchers on car accidents and mobile phone users. Normally this sort of research starts by looking at how many accidents are caused by drivers using mobile phones. Since there seems to be a higher level of accidents involving the mobile phones than would be expected, laws have been passed in many places to make it illegal to use mobile phones in cars. However, it was noticed that in China the ban hasn’t reduced accidents by anything like the amount expected, and the researchers were taxed with trying to find out why.
In this case the researchers started thinking out of the box, and rather than setting off down the well-worn track of looking at police enforcement of the law, they opted to have a look at what sort of people use mobile phones while driving. Well, surprise, surprise, it turns out that there is a close correlation between people who are already reckless drivers, and people who use phones while driving!
Although this isn’t yet a peer reviewed result, it highlights a mistake frequently made by politicians, and others, when using public statistics: mistaking correlation for cause and effect. There is definitely a correlation between accidents and mobile phone use while driving. So the conclusion was drawn that since it’s extremely unlikely that accidents cause mobile phone use, accidents must be caused by mobile phone use. Wrong, in fact what this research suggests is something entirely different - it suggests that mobile phone use is, in fact, one of the bad habits - signatures, if you like - of ongoing dangerous driving. It also shows the uselessness of trying to stop it by passing a special law. Bad driving is already illegal in most countries, so dangerous drivers are already breaking the law, why would they take any more notice of a law targeted at one specific aspect of their overall driving culture?
So, the moral of this little lesson is that when politicians and the like start to talk about cause and effect, stop for a minute and consider whether what they are talking about is truly cause and effect, or just a correlation.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/12/phone_bans/
Alan Lenton
21 October 2013