Smartphones Blamed For Spike In Traffic Deaths

After decades of decline mostly attributed to safer vehicles and stiffer DUI penalties, traffic deaths in the US have spiked by 14.4% over the last two years. The government has yet to formally blame the rise on smartphone use, but others are convinced.

Bloomberg reports:

There are three big clues, and they don’t rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive. From 2014 to 2016, the share of Americans who owned an iPhone, Android phone, or something comparable rose from 75 percent to 81 percent.

The second is the changing way in which Americans use their phones while they drive. These days, we’re pretty much done talking. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the order of the day—all activities that require far more attention than simply holding a gadget to your ear or responding to a disembodied voice. By 2015, almost 70 percent of Americans were using their phones to share photos and follow news events via social media. In just two additional years, that figure has jumped to 80 percent.

Finally, the increase in fatalities has been largely among bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians—all of whom are easier to miss from the driver’s seat than, say, a 4,000-pound SUV—especially if you’re glancing up from your phone rather than concentrating on the road. Last year, 5,987 pedestrians were killed by cars in the U.S., almost 1,100 more than in 2014—that’s a 22 percent increase in just two years.

RELATED: Last week on my trip down to Atlantic City, I got an alert on my iPhone that offered to silence my phone since it appeared that I was driving. It turns out that’s a new feature of the latest iOS.