Enforcement works. That is the lesson of NHTSA's Traffic Safety Facts Research Note "High Visibility Enforcement Demonstration Programs in Connecticut and New York Reduce Hand-Held Phone Use." And publicly announced, visible, open enforcement is even better. The authors reviewed a program that demonstrated significant changes in driver behavior according to a funded, well-publicized enforcement campaign. Why is distracted driving bad? The obvious answer is that operating a motor vehicle is a complicated task that involves making multiple second-to-second decisions at high speed in the face of confusing oncoming threats. The scientific answer is that distracted driving contributes significantly to motor vehicle crash incidence and death. According to 2009 statistics, 16% of fatal crashes and 16% of fatalities were attributable to distracted driving of some kind. Those numbers translate into 5,474 deaths a year. Distracted driving is multifactorial, but cell telephone use and texting are clearly major components. (Author/publisher) Commentary on High Visibility Enforcement Demonstration Programs in Connecticut and New York Reduce Hand-Held Phone Use, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Volume 59, Issue 2, February 2012, Pages 141-142.
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