Police officers are worried they lack the right powers and resources to properly investigate whether a mobile phone was being used by a driver at the time of a crash, a new study has found.
Four out of five collision investigators surveyed for the research indicated mobile phone involvement in non-fatal accidents was under-reported, with half agreeing the role of phones was even overlooked in fatal crashes.
Three quarters of British officers participating in the online poll undertaken by the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) were unable to report the full proportion of road accidents in their force area linked with mobile phone use each year. A similar percentage of officers indicated that better mechanisms to quickly analyse and investigate phone usage would be most likely to improve data collection.
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Sunday November 27 2016, @08:03PM
Almost nothing linked from that page could be considered more than opinion. The one actual "study" isn't about actual accident statistics, it's phone survey asking drivers about accidents.
So, of the 6% of drivers who self-report being in an accident, a subset of 6% report using a phone at the time.
This report mostly just reinforces that young inexperienced drivers are more accident prone, not that there's specific causal link between cel phones in cars and increased accidents.
"Cel phones could distract someone and lead to an accident" is NOT the same as "cel phones in a car cause accidents," or, more specific to the cop claims, "If we find a cel phone in a car, we can claim that it caused the accident."