Cautions about Car Telephones and Collisions

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Abstract
Lawmakers in many countries are waiting for direct evidence that the use of cellular telephones in cars contributes to roadway collisions. In this issue of the Journal, a study of collisions in Toronto provides the first such evidence.1 By comparing the times of cellular-telephone calls, obtained from billing data, with the times of collisions, Redelmeier and Tibshirani estimated that the risk of a collision was between 3.0 and 6.5 times as high within 10 minutes after a cellular-telephone call began as when the telephone was not used. Our further analysis of their data confirmed that the risk more than doubled . . .