Study: Rise in crashes followed bans on texting while driving

Could state bans on texting be boosting accident rates?

That was the disturbing suggestion of a study presented Tuesday at a highway-safety conference, and it closely followed separate research estimating that drivers' texting caused 16,000 fatalities from 2001 through 2007.

The surprising finding came from the insurer-sponsored Highway Loss Data Institute, whose researchers examined crash data from four states - Washington, Louisiana, Minnesota, and California - in the months before and after they enacted texting bans.

Rather than reduce collision losses, bans on texting appeared to trigger a small uptick in crashes in three of the four states, said Russ Rader, a spokesman for the industry group and its parent group, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The researchers said the study raised a question: If the laws simply didn't help, why was there a rise in crashes?

Adrian Lund, president of the institutes, said the problem may be that drivers are suffering a dual distraction - first by the texting itself, and second by attempts to avoid being noticed.

"Clearly drivers did respond to the bans somehow," Lund said in a statement. "What they might have been doing was moving their phones down and out of sight when they texted, in recognition that what they were doing was illegal."

Rader said the data showed a particular rise in crashes among young drivers - the same 18- to 24-year-olds who surveys show "are most likely to text while driving" whatever state laws decree. New Jersey and about 30 other states have banned texting while driving, and proposals are pending in Pennsylvania.

The industry's methodology drew a sharp response from Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who wrote in a blog entry that the study "created a cause and effect that simply doesn't exist" and ignored the role of effective enforcement.

LaHood said the portion of fatalities linked to distraction rose from 10 percent in 2005 to 16 percent in 2008 before stabilizing last year.

"That leveling off coincided with our national anti-distracted driving campaign, other public education efforts, and an increasing number of state anti-distracted driving laws," he said.

A study published last week in the American Journal of Public Health put stark numbers on the risks of texting, which it said had apparently contributed to "an alarming rise in distracted driving fatalities."

The study by University of North Texas researchers estimated that texting caused 16,000 U.S. fatalities from 2001 to 2007 in crashes that "increasingly involved male drivers driving alone in collisions with roadside obstructions in urban areas."