That viral car crash statistic about texting and driving turned out to be half true

I saw this stat floating around on Facebook that said texting while driving is 6 times more dangerous than drunk driving. It sounded so wild I had to dig into it. Turns out the number came from a 2009 study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, but they were comparing different things. The 6 times figure was about how much longer reaction times get with texting versus just talking on the phone, not actual crash risk. When I looked at real crash data from the NHTSA, drunk driving still causes way more accidents every year. The person who shared the post probably just saw a headline and ran with it. Makes me wonder how many other viral stats we believe without checking the fine print. Has anyone else caught a popular stat that fell apart when you actually looked at the source?

3 comments

3 Comments

davis.olivia12d ago

Are you saying that statistic they've been repeating on every news channel for years was basically comparing apples to oranges? That's almost worse than it being completely made up, because now I feel like a sucker for having cited it in arguments before. Definitely going to be checking the source on anything from 2009 before I repeat it from now on.

blair7012d ago

Actually that 2009 study was from the University of Utah, not Virginia Tech. The Virginia Tech one did the camera thing in trucks, but the 6x number came from Utah's simulator work. Still a mess of comparing different things though, honestly

kai_burns7312d ago

Hang on a second, that Utah study actually compared texting to the legal BAC limit of 0.08... not to an actual drunk driver with a higher BAC. So the 6x number is even more shaky when you realize the baseline they used wasn't really fair. It's a good lesson in reading past the headline for sure.