Good afternoon all,
A follow-up to last week’s story that listed Delaware as one of the worst states for distracted driving.
Wilmington-based AAA Mid-Atlantic claims the ValuePenguin report had the following flaws:
- Using 10 billion vehicles miles traveled the typical 100 million vehicle miles traveled which is the more standard set of units for exposure in traffic safety. In doing so, the authors sensationalize very small rates.
- The way the authors have manipulated the data simply leads readers to overestimate the magnitude of driver distraction issue at hand. For example, the authors state that Delaware has 3.28 fatalities per 10 billion miles driven, and then claim this is nearly 350 percent the rate of Maryland. This sounds extreme, but when you look at the raw data behind these statistics the story is much less compelling.
- The authors use FARS data only on cell-phone-related crashes. This is in and of itself problematic due to the dearth of data available in this area. Most analyses of distraction-affected crashes look at distraction from all causes to help increase the power of the analysis.
(FARS is short for Fatality Analysis Reporting System, operated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
ValuePenguin, which is part of the LendingTree group of companies, offered the following:
“We really do appreciate their (AAA’s) feedback, and for raising several valid points. Our study’s aim was to draw attention to the issue of cell phones related distracted driving accidents, which attributed to 1,420 deaths from 2015 to 2017 according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s FARS database. Even though these accidents only account for around 1 percent of all traffic fatalities reported during this period, we consider this conversation to be particularly important at this time…”
It is true that a small number of reports that come from a tiny state like Delaware can have an outsized effect on rankings. Delaware was also quick to ban handsets while driving (although motorists continue to pay no attention and get thousands of tickets.). Among other states in the top tier, restrictions were fewer. Montana goes as far as to not ban texting while driving.
Both Value Penguin and AAA emphasized that distracted driving, regardless of how the numbers are crunched, is a big problem.
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