The National Safety Council (NSC) claims that due to a database recording glitch, the federal government may be seriously under-reporting the number of actual fatal cell phone-related traffic accidents in the United States.
The NSC study looked at 2011 crash data that had been collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and found that the way the federal agency identified fatal accidents and entered them into its database was flawed. The NSC claims that NHTSA may have under-reported cell phone-related fatal accidents by 48 percent.
The NSC said that it found a number of examples in the NHTSA database where the cause of a fatal accident was listed as “failure to keep in proper lane.” While that may have been literally true, NSC claims it doesn’t accurately reflect the actual root cause of the accidents, which were caused by cell phone use.
The council came to this conclusion after comparing 2011 data that it and Focus Driven had gathered with the information provided in the NHTSA database. Focus Driven is an advocacy group that is working to reduce cell phone-related traffic accidents nationwide.
Safety News Alert reports that besides the NSC study, there is other “anecdotal evidence” that suggests that reports of fatal cell phone related crashes may not reflect reality. In 2010, Tennessee reported that 93 fatal crashes were caused by cell phone use. New York, with three times the population of Tennessee, reported only one cell phone related crash fatality during the same time period.
While the federal government reported 350 nationwide cell phone related fatalities in 2011, the NSC study suggests that the number might have been more like 700 — or even more.
If you’ve been injured, or if you have lost a loved one in an accident caused by a distracted driver, contact the automobile accident attorneys at Farah & Farah in Jacksonville to review your legal rights. Call us today at (800) 533-3555 or contact us online for a free consultation.
