Driver phone bans' impact doubted

A national crackdown on distracted driving takes an unexpected turn today. A new study shows that the number of traffic crashes did not drop in three states and the District of Columbia after they banned drivers from using handheld cellphones.

The Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), examined insurance claims for crash damage in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C., before and after handheld bans took effect and found no reduction in crashes.

"Absolutely, we were surprised by these results," says Adrian Lund, president of IIHS and HLDI. An Insurance Institute study in 2000 found that drivers talking on cellphones were four times as likely to crash as drivers not using phones. "The key finding is that crashes aren't going down where handheld phone use has been banned," Lund says. "This finding doesn't augur well for any safety payoff from all the new laws that ban phone use and texting while driving."

Despite exponential growth in the number of cellphone subscribers, the number of fatal and non-fatal crashes reported by police has remained fairly flat.

Number of all crashes (fatal and non-fatal ) reported by police:

1993: 6,105,915

1994: 6,495,988

1995: 6,699,415

1996: 6,769,583

1997: 6,624,149

1998: 6,334,573

1999: 6,279,036

2000: 6,393,624

2001: 6,322,963

2002: 6,315,708

2003: 6,327,955

2004: 6,181,027

2005: 6,159,350

2006: 5,973,213

2007: 6,024,008

2008: 5,810,691

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety