The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?

Per ceg:
>Overall accident statistics for the USA are very reliable, since they are
>reported by police, insurance companies, and by individuals.

Am I the only one that sees a non-sequitur in that statement?

I'm thinking it's somewhere in he
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

But I'm haven't drunk enough coffee lately to find it.
--
Pete Cresswell

On 8/16/2015 7:10 PM, Muggles wrote:

>
> I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be.
>

I agree with you, however, have you ever seen anyone playing a musical
instrument while driving?I never have.

Listening to music though, is far different that talking on the phone.
The brain can easily tune out the radio since it is a passive activity.
The phone requires your active participation and concentration. It
has been proven many times.

In sci.electronics.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:24:42 +0000 (UTC), ceg
> wrote:

>On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 11:32:55 -0400, micky wrote:
>
>>>Yet, the paradox remains because actual accident statistics are
>>>*extremely reliable*.
>>
>> Why is that a paradox?
>
>I thought the paradox was clear by my Fermi Paradox example.
>
>Do you remember the Fermi Paradox?

No, I don't.

>As I recall, a bunch of rocket scientists were making the assumption
>before lunch that aliens must exist, when, all of a sudden, Fermi, over
>lunch, realized belatedly that if they do exist, then there must be some
>"signal" (or evidence) from them.

Enrico Fermi said that? Because it's not true. Until humans on earth
invented radio, less than 200 years ago, there were no signals from us.

And none of our radio waves have reached places 200 light years away or
more even now.

Plus there are animals living in the woods and rivers and oceans and on
mountains and underground that people who never go to those places never
see and only know about because others have told them. If others didn't
tell them, they wouldn't know. If the animals there are sending out
signals, they are short distance signals and they don't reach me.

>That evidence didn't exist.
>Hence the paradox.
>
>It's the same concept here.
>
>1. We all assume cellphone use while driving is distracting.
>2. We then assume that distracted driving causes accidents.
>3. But, the belated realization is that there is no evidence supporting
>this assumption in the total accident statistics (which are reliable).
>
>Even worse, if we believe the studies and the (clearly flawed) statistics
>on cellphone use while driving, that just makes the paradox WORSE!
>
>If cellphone use is so distractingly dangerous, why isn't it *causing*
>more accidents?
>
>That's the paradox.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 16:47:34 -0700, Jeff Liebermann >
wrote:

>On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 22:49:38 +0000 (UTC), ceg
> wrote:
>
>>Overall accident statistics for the USA are very reliable, since they are
>>reported by police, insurance companies, and by individuals.
>
>Most people lie on accident reports to avoid potential complications
>with insurance payments. For example, few will admit that it was
>their fault when the traffic policeman is standing there just waiting
>for a confession and to deliver an expensive ticket.
>
>Anecdote time. While going to medical skool, a doctor friend worked
>in the coroners office of a large city. Like all large cities, the
>coroners office had a steady stream of deadbeats, bums, winos, and
>homeless that arrived without the benefit of medical attention and
>records. Not wanting to spend the money on an autopsy and a medical
>examiner, they quietly guessed at the cause of death with fairly good
>accuracy. However, after a few embarrassing mistakes, that was deemed
>unacceptable. Causes unknown were also not a viable option. So, they
>inscribed "heart failure" on all such cases, which was certainly true,
>but not necessarily the cause of death. That actually worked well for
>a few years, until someone ran statistics on what appeared to be a
>heart disease epidemic centered in this large city. The city now
>requires either an attending physician report or a mandatory autopsy.
>
>While I'm not in a position to prove or demonstrate this, I think
>you'll find that such "accident" reports are highly opinionated, are
>skewed in the direction of smallest settlements, and are rarely
>corrected.
>
>>The numbers are high enough, and consistent enough, to make the error
>>only a very small percentage.
>
>Right. Big numbers are more accurate.
>
>The theory is that given a sufficiently large number of independent
>studies, the errors will be equally distributed on both sides of a
>desired result, and therefore cancel. That has worked well for global
>warming predictions. Unfortunately, the studies have to be
>independent to qualify and does not work at reducing the distribution
>in a single study.
>
>>You won't get *better* data that the census bureau data on accidents in
>>the USA by state - and none are showing what we'd expect.
>
>OMG! Do you really trust the government to do anything correctly? I
>wish I had your confidence and less personal experience. I'll spare
>you another anecdote illustrating the problem at the city level.
>
>>Hence the paradox.
>>Where are the accidents?
>
>Ok, think about it. You've just crashed your car into an immovable
>object while texting. You're still conscious and on an adrenalin
>high. The police are on their way and the last thing you need is for
>them to find your smartphone on the floor of the vehicle. So, you
>make a phone call to your wife telling her you'll be late for dinner
>and by the way, you've decided to buy her a new car. The police walk
>up, ask you a few questions, and notice you talking on the cell phone.
>If you're cooperative, nothing happens. If you're a total jerk, the
>mention the cell phone in their report, and you get nailed for
>possibly talking/texting while driving. You're screwed if they
>confiscate the phone for forensic analysis or request a call record
>from you provider.
>
>In short, the statisics are where they want them. If there's a
>political or financial benefit to showing huge numbers of talk/text
>driving accidents, they will magically appear. If they thing that
>nobody really cares about the numbers, you will have a difficult time
>finding them. If the numbers accumulate some academic interest, you
>will see the same wrong information repeated endlessly in statistical
>surveys and college dissertations. Everyone lies, but that's ok
>because nobody listens. Incidentally, 87.3% of all statistics are
>fabricated for the occasion.

You've missed the point. All those things you raise may well be true
but they were just as true before there were cell phones. The mix of
truth and lies in accident reports goes on but one key thing continues
and that is that virtually ALL significant accidents, certainly those
society might want to concern itself with, are REPORTED and go into
the statistics of HOW MANY accidents. Yeah, the listed causes might
be lies or honest mistakes but the NUMBERS are reported consistently
year after year after year. And its the NUMBERS of accidents ceg is
talking about as the data set, not the CAUSE that's listed. So we
know that the NUMBER of accidents, rate actually, the normalized
number, has steadily been going down down down.

Yet there are people claiming that a NEW and HORRIBLY DANGEROUS CAUSE
of accidents has been unleashed into the driving world, the Cell
Phone. We can't argue with the fact that over the past two decades
MILIIONS AND MILLLIONS of cell phones wound up in the hands of and
used by drivers, that's just a fact. But if all those cell phones are
REALLY this horribly DANGERIOUS ACCIDENT CAUSING instrument, WHERE ARE
THE ACCIDENTS????

In sci.electronics.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 17:52:04 -0700, Jeff
Liebermann > wrote:

>On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:24:42 +0000 (UTC), ceg
> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 11:32:55 -0400, micky wrote:
>>> Why is that a paradox?
>
>>I thought the paradox was clear by my Fermi Paradox example.
>
>Think again. The Fermi Paradox is better stated as:
>"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".
>Much of this has its basis in theology where wrestling over the
>existence of God is an international sport. A more simplistic version
>is that you can't prove anything with nothing as evidence.
>
>The corollary also doesn't work whe
>"Quantity of evidence is not evidence of quantity".
>In other words, just because you have a large pile of numbers, doesn't
>mean you can prove a large number of things.
>
>The problem is that the "Fermi Paradox" is the logic sucks.
>
> "The great Enrico Fermi proposed the following paradox. Given
> the size of the universe and evidence of intelligent life on
> Earth making it non-zero probability for intelligent life
> elsewhere, how come have we not been visited by aliens? Where
> is everybody?, he asked."
>
> No matter how minute the probability of such life, the size
> should bring the probability to 1. (In fact we should have

The thing is that probabilty on a yes or no question is only valuable
for betting parlors and insurance brokers, which are really the same
thing. One may thing the probability is very high, because there are
so many places life could be, but if there is no life beyond the earth,
it doesn't matter what the probability WAS.

It is partly tied up with theology, iiuc, in that some believers in God
want to believe that this earth is his only creation. I don't know why
they would think that either.

Another problem, IMO, is that scientists, as reported by the news, seem
to think life could only be water based, and seem to discount places
without water. . I know water has advantages, but it's not the only
possibility.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there were no life anywhere else.
There are cerrtainly lots of places beyond earth with no life, so why
not more.

OTOH, if there is life, I see no special reason they would have a radio
transmitter. Until I got a cell phone, I didn't have one.


> been visited a high number of times: see the Kolmogorov and
> Borel zero-one laws.)
>
>So, what's missing? Well, it's time or rather how many solar
>revolutions a civilization can exist without destroying itself or
>having some cosmic catastrophe do it for them. The details are worked
>out in the Drake Equation:
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation>
>which computes the probability of two civilizations coming into
>contact. If you happen to be a pessimist, and use pessimistic
>probabilities, the probability might as well be zero. Inflating the
>statistical population to astronomical proportions does nothing to
>change the probabilities and certainly will not result in a 100%
>chance of an alien encounter.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 21:05:33 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)" >
wrote:

>Per ceg:
>>Overall accident statistics for the USA are very reliable, since they are
>>reported by police, insurance companies, and by individuals.
>
>Am I the only one that sees a non-sequitur in that statement?
>
>I'm thinking it's somewhere in he
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies
>
>But I'm haven't drunk enough coffee lately to find it.


No non-sequitur. The statistics ARE reliable as a year to year
measure. That an individual report may have errors is unquestionably
true. But the only number of significance is simply the NUMBER of
REPROTED accidents, not the accuracy of the little details of the
reports. If Officer Odie is dyslexic and instead of Hwy 52 MP 429 he
puts Hwy 25 MP 249 the report will be off by perhaps hundreds of miles
but that ACCIDENT occurred and it is included as part of the Total
number of accidents that go into the rate. Unless you want to make an
argument that there is some systemic problem where the same accidents
are getting reported multiple times for almost every jurisdiction in a
state or that the dog is eating the reports before they are filed I
don't see any reason to challenge the basic accident rates as accurate
enough for this discussion.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 23:25:35 +0000 (UTC), ceg
> wrote:

>On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:10:06 -0500, Muggles wrote:
>
>> I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be.
>
>If that is the case, that cellphone usage is *not* distracting, then,
>instantly, that would *solve* the paradox.
>
>But, then, how do we reconcile that observation with the fact that
>(unnamed) "studies show" that cellphone use is "as distracting as
>driving drunkly"?
>
>The *new* paradox looms - which is - if cellphone use isn't distracting,
>then why do "studies show" that it *is* distracting (as drunk driving)?
>

I've elaborated on that very question earlier in this thread. The
short version is that most of the 'studies' are crap designed to prove
cell phones are dangerous thru a variety of nonsensical study
protocols. You want to prove pianos are dangerous? Do a study where
one person puts their head under the upraised and held in place by the
stick "hood" of the piano then simulate a magnitude 6 earthquake.
You'll find pianos to be quite dangerous.


>Nothing makes sense in all these arguments.
>There is very little intelligent discussion.
>
>So, maybe the solution to the paradox is, as you said, "it really
>doesn't matter" whether someone is using the phone while driving,
>or not, with respect to accident rates in the USA???
>
>But that flies against "common wisdom".

On 16 Aug 2015 19:54:01 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>ceg > wrote:
>>On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 18:10:06 -0500, Muggles wrote:
>>
>>> I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be.
>>
>>If that is the case, that cellphone usage is *not* distracting, then,
>>instantly, that would *solve* the paradox.
>
>It's true, playing music can be pretty distracting. It isn't normally,
>but sometimes it can be.
>
>>But, then, how do we reconcile that observation with the fact that
>>(unnamed) "studies show" that cellphone use is "as distracting as
>>driving drunkly"?
>
>Well, around here, driving drunkly was common and normal behaviour for
>a large segment of the population thirty years ago, and now it isn't.
>Perhaps as a hazard it has disappeared and been replaced with texting
>while driving instead.
>
>>The *new* paradox looms - which is - if cellphone use isn't distracting,
>>then why do "studies show" that it *is* distracting (as drunk driving)?
>>
>>Nothing makes sense in all these arguments.
>>There is very little intelligent discussion.
>
>This is true, because there is very little actual data. So an intelligent
>discussion is pretty much impossible.
>--scott

No, there is a LOT of data. And contrary to the theorizing of the
alarmists, there is no REAL WORLD evidence that the literal explosion
of cell phone use has caused even a blip in accident rates. A few
anecdotes of 'I saw Santa on his cell phone and he drove his sleigh
right into the side of the chimney" don't prove that cell phones are
some special case of distraction that should be outlawed while we
still allow the carrying of chatty passengers, the eating of food, the
application of lipstick, and the fiddling with CDs and MP3 players.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 22:21:39 -0400, Ed Pawlowski > wrote:

>On 8/16/2015 7:10 PM, Muggles wrote:
>
>>
>> I highly doubt it's any more distracting than playing music might be.
>>
>
>I agree with you, however, have you ever seen anyone playing a musical
>instrument while driving?I never have.
>
>Listening to music though, is far different that talking on the phone.
>The brain can easily tune out the radio since it is a passive activity.
> The phone requires your active participation and concentration. It
>has been proven many times.

So using a cell phone should be much more dangerous AND result in a
SIGNIFICANT increase in accidents over the past 20 years as the use of
cell phones has exploded. Yet there isn't the slightest evidence of
that in the accident data.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 01:10:23 -0500, ceg > wrote:

> The cellphone paradox - where are all the accidents?
>
> The Fermi Paradox is essentially a situation where we "assume" something
> that "seems obvious"; but, if that assumption is true, then something
> else
> "should" be happening. But it's not.
>
> Hence, the paradox.
>
> Same thing with the cellphone (distracted-driving) paradox.
>
> Where are all the accidents?
>
> They don't seem to exist.
> At least not in the United States.
> Not by the federal government's own accident figures.
>
> 1. Current Census, Transportation: Motor Vehicle Accidents and Fatalities
> http://www.census.gov/compendia/stat...atalities.html
>
> 2. Motor Vehicle Accidents—Number and Deaths: 1990 to 2009
> http://www.census.gov/compendia/stat...es/12s1103.pdf
>
> 3. Motor Vehicle Crash Deaths in Metropolitan Areas — United States, 2009
> http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6128a2.htm
>
> If you have more complete government tables for "accidents" (not deaths,
> but "ACCIDENTS"), please post them since the accidents don't seem to
> exist
> but, if cellphone distracted driving is hazardous (which I would think it
> is), then they must be there, somewhere, hidden in the data.
>
> Such is the cellphone paradox.
>

Mythbusters on the Science Channel just aired a test of hands free
vs. hands on cell phone
use while driving. All but one test subject failed their simulator test
either by crashing or getting lost.
Thirty people took the test. The show aired 9:30 CDT on August 16.

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