Cell phones don't cause car crashes...

A new study shows no correlation between car wrecks and cell phones. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=132130
This perfectly illustrates that a study can show anything you like, if you massage the data correctly or have your head so firmly shoved up your ivory tower that you can't see the light of day. Most people have trouble doing more than one complicated thing at a time. Driving is complicated. Sure you can do it on cruise control most of the time, but you have to be alert and prepared for anything. At 60mph, you're moving at 88 feet per second. That's a lot of ground in a hurry.

A distracted driver will have more car accidents than one who is paying attention to the road. That's common sense. The key is how the accident is reported to the police.
- People in an accident will slant the story to make themselves look better. Are they going to admit they were chatting away? I think not.
- What about the accidents caused that they weren't involved in? I'm sure they're not reported to the police. I've seen an instance where a person in a large SUV weaved out into another lane, causing another car to go into the ditch. The police said since the SUV didn't make contact with the other car, they could not consider it to be at fault.

I think these budding scientists need to come out and commute an hour every day. As the roads get more crowded, vehicles get faster and people get busier at the wheel, we'll continue to see more accidents. People are getting more options to get distracted everyday. GPS, phones, onboard computers, dvd players - a host of things.