On 2024-12-11 13:42, badgolferman wrote:

Alan wrote:

We will have to agree to disagree on this issue.

Let's see how well that works for you...

Arlen and I don't speak to each other in insulting ways like many do on
this newsgroup. We have disagreed before and left it at that.

Because you cower and don't defend your position.

Defend this one...

...and see what it gets you.

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On 2024-12-11 13:13, badgolferman wrote:

Andrew <andys@nospam.com> wrote:

David Yurman wrote on Wed, 11 Dec 2024 07:51:04 +0100 (CET) :

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2025, Colorado drivers will no longer be allowed to >>> use a mobile electronic device while driving unless they use it via hands- >>> free accessories.

Notwithstanding the police and fire vehicles have tons of electronics in
them and they're not hands free, the fact that most people can't comprehend >> (because they simply guess at everything is there is no reliable scientific >> evidence that the use of cellphones in the USA in vehicles had any effect
whatsoever (up or down) on the reliably reported accident rate over the
period before cellphone ownership percentages skyrocketed, during the
period where cellphone ownership percentages went from 0% to nearly 100%,
and afterward, to today.

The accident rate, as reported by the US Census Bureau, which has been
reporting these figures accurately since the 1920's, shows no effect.

Actually, the accident rate has been slowly trending downward, but that was >> happening before, during the rise in ownership, and after the plateau.

Nobody can find a single cite on the entire Internet showing US accident
rates rising from before, to during and after cellphones existed.

The *only* people claiming it did make money out of creating the laws.
1. Lawyers
2. Police
3. Insurance

Nobody on this newsgroup has ever found a reliable cite showing the
accident rate in the USA rising in accord with cellphone ownership.

All they can find is lawyers, police and insurance companies saying it.
But those three entities have a reason to skew numbers for money.

If you look at the government US Census Bureau figures, there are blips
here and there (since accident rates depend on many factors), but there is >> zero evidence of the rise that the lawyers, police & insurance claim.

And for all the morons out there who love to claim "absence of evidence is >> not evidence of absence", then simply show evidence of these accidents that >> you religiously feel must exist simply because you want them to exist.

Likewise with the idiots out there who love to claim "correlation does not >> imply causation" instantly wipes out all the good data that you simply do
not like, then again, show evidence of your claim that the accident rate
skyrocketed when cellphones were introduced.

You have plenty of data in the US Census Bureau figures becaue they list
them for every year since the 1920's for every state and for the USA as a
whole.

So you can watch every state and list when the cellphone laws went into
effect and you can see that there is ZERO evidence of a rise (or fall) in
accidents due to the astoundingly huge and precipitously sudden rise in
cellphone ownership rates.

For those who are slightly intelligent who claim (reasonably so) that
nobgody has reliable statistics for whether, given the thousands of
accidents a year, whether the cellphone itself was the cause, that's true. >> So live with it. Don't fantasize that it caused it when you don't know.

Likewise, for those who are a bit more reasonable, who claim that we can't >> even tell when a cellphone is being used in a car given the thousands of
accidents per year, that's also true. So live with that lack of data.
Don't make it up simply because your friend of your sister had a cellphone >> and then there was an accident.

Back to the ignorant, the fact that you can find an anecdotal case of a
cellphone causing an accident is meaningless in terms of statistics. Yes, I >> know, you can't handle math so you think 1 is the same a 1 million, but
stop fantasizing that every sensational news storey is what happens in the >> statistics.

I'm sure very moron out there can dig up one accident out of the hundreds
of thousands over the years which *was* caused by a cellphone. For sure.

But that's ridiculous to make a law based on that. You may as well make a
law that crying kids and wife arguing should be made illegal simply because >> each of them has caused one accident by your Aunt Mary with your uncle Jim. >>
In summary, the law is baseless.

Mainly it's political because 3 agencies love to make money on this law:
1. Insurance
2. Police
3. Lawyers

I don’t believe statistics that tell me distracted driving caused by using cell phones hasn’t led to more accidents. I can see with my own eyes how people are extremely dangerous to be around with their erratic driving, excessively large gaps between themselves and the car in front of them, and their eyes pointing down rather than ahead. I don’t care what the statistics say because as a motorcycle rider I watch like a hawk what
drivers around me are doing and I make it a point to look inside their cars to ensure their attention is on the road. And then there are the people around them who are affected by the distracted and erratic driving,
sometimes leading to accidents on their part as they try to avoid or pass
the distracted driver.

Then there is the epidemic of people driving with their high beams on in
town and blinding the rest of us. Unfortunately I can’t see if they’re looking at their phones because I can’t see anything from the glare they’re
producing.

We will have to agree to disagree on this issue.

Let's see how well that works for you...

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Chris wrote on Thu, 12 Dec 2024 22:00:04 -0000 (UTC) :

A newer org (NTA?) publishes other up to date stats which do show an
increase in accidents/million miles and also deaths.

Chris,

Are you even aware that cellphones didn't exist, then they suddenly
existed, and then the ownership rates skyrocketed in only a few years to
nearly 100% and then they plateaued (at almost 100%) per driving adult?

Where is this doubling, tripling, quadrupling or whatever you claim
happened to the accident rate during the skyrocketing ownership period?

Show us a cite showing the accident rate skyrocketed during those years.

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badgolferman wrote on Thu, 12 Dec 2024 11:46:15 -0000 (UTC) :

First let me say I use two different newsreaders, NewsTap and Xananews.
When I reply to one of your crossposted messages with mobile NewsTap,
it will not send to that many groups and I must remove them in my
reply. My desktop Xananews has no such limitation.

There's an old adage which you may have heard before: "Scientists have discovered that people will believe anything when you claim scientists
have discovered it."

Since I work in the science field and actually have seen how the
sausage is made, I take with a grain of salt "consensus scientific
facts" much of the time. It's not the actual data gathering which is suspect, it's how the data is processed and the inherent biases of the scientists and researchers which are tasked with presenting the data to
the scientific community.

One example is how you often hear the current administration has
deported more illegal aliens than the previous administration. This statistic is used to justify border policies. Taken in a vacuum with
no other input it sounds great, but when reading other news sources or listening to the people on the ground you find out that is a misleading statistic. Maybe the "fact" is true, but it ignores other facts that
vastly higher multitudes of illegal aliens are being let through the
borders unchecked. The sheer frustration of citizens in blue states
which flipped red this election cycle is a good indication of how
people don't believe official government statistics. The jobs,
inflation and economic statistics are yet other examples of misleading reports.

We all have inherent biases which make us look at "facts" in a
different way. I do not deny that my own biases shaped by my
experiences cause me to doubt distracted cell phone use doesn't lead to additional accidents, as you contend. The "fact" that distracted
drivers affect the rest of us on the road cannot be denied either.

I am now ready to hear your theory of why the accident rate of cell
phone distracted driving has not skyrocketed.

Hi badgolferman,

Let's ignore everything I've said so we can concentrate on what *you* think happened to the accident rate during the years that there was clearly a meteoric rise in cellphone ownership rates in the United States.

FACTS:
1. We all agree cellphones didn't exist before a certain date, right?
2. We all agree their ownership rates skyrocketed in a few years, right?
3. We all agree that USA ownership has plateaued at almost 100% right?

Do we agree on those basic facts (because if we can't agree on the most
basic of starting points, there's no sense proceeding further, right?)?

ASSUMPTIONS:
A. We all assume distractions are a major cause of accidents, right?
B. We all assume cellphones are an added distraction, right?
C. We all intuit that must have made the accident rate skyrocket, right?

Notice there may NOT be agreement on those three points, so we need to
flesh out if we need to agree or not, particularly on the last point above.

Assuming we agree on all six tenets above, my only question remaining is
what do you think happened to the US accident rate between these 3 periods:
a. Before cellphones
b. During cellphone ownership meteoric rise
c. After that - where it plateaued at nearly 100% ownership

What do *YOU* claim happened to the accident rate?

Did it double? Triple? Quadruple? Pentuple?
What?

If you can't answer that question then I don't know what your position is. Nobody could until you state what you think happened to the accident rate.

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On 2024-12-12 18:11, Andrew wrote:

Chris wrote on Thu, 12 Dec 2024 22:00:04 -0000 (UTC) :

A newer org (NTA?) publishes other up to date stats which do show an
increase in accidents/million miles and also deaths.

Chris,

Are you even aware that cellphones didn't exist, then they suddenly
existed, and then the ownership rates skyrocketed in only a few years to nearly 100% and then they plateaued (at almost 100%) per driving adult?

Where is this doubling, tripling, quadrupling or whatever you claim
happened to the accident rate during the skyrocketing ownership period?

Show us a cite showing the accident rate skyrocketed during those years.

Why do you imagine it has to be a "doubling, tripling, [or] quadrupling"?

That's what logical adults call a "straw man argument".

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badgolferman wrote on Fri, 13 Dec 2024 02:55:51 -0000 (UTC) :

I vaguely recall you posting a study that showed the accident *rate*
has decreased.

Hi badgolferman,

I am trying to understand *your* position; for that, it doesn't matter what
I said - what only matters is what you think happened to the accident rate.

Do you think the accident rate doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? Pentupled?

I don't remember if it was a rate or total accidents though.

It's extremely important to note that the number of accidents will depend
on many factors, whereas the accident rate is a typical normalized value.

Sensationalists talk about accidents; scientists talk about rates.

If it was a rate then that could still mean there are more accidents than ever.

The sensationalist media will talk about accidents (e.g., number of plane accidents) because most people have no education in math or sciences.

But a respectable scientist or engineer would state their conclusions based
on rates (e.g., number of plane accidents per passenger mile) simply
because science uses normalized values.

The number of accidents fluctuates wildly based on a variety of unrelated factors such as Covid lockdowns, the economy, gas prices, weather, etc.

Considering the population of the US has risen by
roughly 100 million people since my teenage years it likely means the
total accidents have risen as well.

Reliable scientists or engineers concludes based on rate, not number.
The reason is rate is normalized. Numbers fluctuate wildly.

Those wild fluctuations are completely unrelated since they depend on gas prices, the economy, covid lockdowns, weather anomalies, construction, etc.

The rate has *always* been the typical normalized value for accidents.

Note: I'm well aware sensationalist non-scientific entities quote accidents
and not rates because as they can pick any convenient period they like.

Regardless of what the study says about accident rates, I wonder how
can they even tell if cell phones were a major cause of the accidents.

Rest assured you can't.

Everyone who has studied this problem knows this fact of life.

But you can infer based on the accident rates, since your own basic logic predicts a skyrocketing accident rate which you can't find ever happening.

Doesn't that make you wonder about your conclusions when there is no data supporting what you (and I) would intuit to be the case, badgolferman?

Notice both of us intuit that (a) cellphones are a distraction and (b) distractions are a cause of accidents so, duh, (c) the accident rate must
have skyrocketed during the meteoric rise of USA cellphone ownership.

Think about that.

1. A million people (including me) intuit that rates skyrocketed.
2. One person out of a million (i.e., me) checks the data.

The fact that people "think" the rates skyrocketed is one reason why I say
most people are incredibly stupid even as I "would have thought" they did.

Just like with my checking of Apple's claims of "it just works", 999,999
out of a million people don't bother to check Apple's claims; yet, I do.

Where is the rate increase your intuition (and mine) predicts?
It doesn't exist.

Considering cars today are outfitted with a myriad of safety features
such as collision avoidance, lane assistance, and several other ones
which help distracted drivers who aren't looking at the road avoid accidents... it begs the question whether your lower accident rate is
really a result of improved automobile safety features.

Please understand that I'm not an idiot. Of course the accident rate is affected by other factors. Duh. That's why it has been trending downward.

There are myriad things that make vehicles less prone to accidents, from
the third taillight to brighter headlights to better road reflectors to
better trash cleanup to better plowing to brighter road signs to traffic
lights to crosswalk flashing lights to speed radar signs to police
enforcement to tire pressure monitors to anti-lock braking to disc brakes versus drum brakes to taller vehicles (such as SUVs) to better pavement traction (e.g., grooves) to better traffic monitoring, etc.

Notice though that people are screaming how unsafe cellphones are, and that
is something that we know the exact years they came into play where all
those other factors above have been slowly trending downward for decades.

If cellphones are as dangerous as you think they are, what do *YOU* think happened to the accident rate when cellphone ownership had a meteoric rise?

Did it double? Triple? Quadruple? Pentuple? Was it a ten-fold increase?
What do *YOU* think happened to the accident rate in the USA?
a. Before cellphones
b. During the meteoric skyrocketing rise in the use of cellphones
c. And thereafter

If you can't answer that simple question, then no intelligent discourse is possible because your position isn't a position. It's just an emotion.

Note: Nothing wrong with emotions, mind you; but it's not science.

Regardless of the answer, I trust my own eyes and instinct when it
comes to identifying vehicles that are a menace to other drivers on the
road. I'd rather be around an aggresive driver than a driver paying
more attention to their phone.

I'm trying to understand what *YOUR* position is on the danger you feel.

There is no way for anyone to have an intelligent conversation with anyone
else on this topic until they each state their position - which you & Chris haven't stated. All you've done is say mine is wrong. Fine. Alan Baker does that too. So did nospam. As does Jolly Roger.

Without knowing *YOUR* position - there is no way to have any discussion.

What do *YOU* (& Chris) think happened to the accident rate given how
extremely dangerous you feel those cellphones are when used while driving?

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Chris wrote on Fri, 13 Dec 2024 18:02:22 -0000 (UTC) :

Correct response. He provides no evidence, yet expect others to do so.

Hi Chris,

You and I have discussed the reliable statistics in gory detail in the past
and all you could find was a single PDF from 2017 (long after cellphones skyrocketed) that showed a minor percentage rise in the accident rates for
a given year (I think it was 2009, as I recall - but you can correct me).

You couldn't find the astoundingly huge rate increase you claim exists.
That's because you simply fabricated that rate increase out of thin air.

Suffice to say anyone claiming the accident rate went is making it up.

If you think the accident rate went up, why can't you say by how much
Chris? Did it go up by ten fold? A hundred fold? A thousand fold?

What?

How much did the accident rate go up Chris?

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On 2024-12-13 08:50, badgolferman wrote:

Andrew wrote:

Without knowing YOUR position - there is no way to have any
discussion.

I think I've made my position clear. I am dubious of the report and
have already stated various reasons why. The study states the accident *rate* has decreased since the use of cell phones has increased so that
would seem to imply that distracted cell phone usage is actually a
safer way to drive! Your contention that intelligent people can handle additional distractions and stupid people can't is not logical to me
since we also know there are far more stupid people than intelligent
people behind the wheel these days.

This will be my last message for this thread. You may have the last
word.

Run away...

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