The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released numbers on Tuesday showing a slight decrease in the number of fatal accidents in 2014 but an 8.1 percent increase in estimated fatalities in the first half of 2015 compared to the first half of 2014.
Speaking to Reuters, NHTSA head Mark Rosekind guessed that, although it’s too early to tell what has caused the increase in estimated fatalities, smartphone use may have contributed. "The increase in smartphones in our hands is so significant, there's no question that has to play some role. But we don't have enough information yet to determine how big a role,” Rosekind said.
While cautioning that the results for the January to June 2015 fatality estimate could be subject to major adjustments when the Administration does its year-end tally, the NHTSA posited that low gas prices throughout 2015 could have led to more driving from teenagers and other “risky drivers.”
Safety officials tempered that hypothesis by acknowledging that one-third of fatalities in 2014 occurred due to drunk driving, and half of all people killed in a car in the US last year were not wearing seat belts. Distracted driving, which includes smartphone use, caused 10 percent of all traffic fatalities in 2014.
As Ars reported last year, voice-activated systems are not always better than using a smartphone, either. A study conducted in Utah showed that the infotainment systems on Chrysler, Ford, and Mercedes vehicles were more distracting to use than talking on a handheld phone.
Still, the NHTSA said that it would look to technology to help reduce some of these traffic risks, launching initiatives to “speed technology innovations that can improve safety.” This can include things like lane keep assist or automatic emergency braking, which the US Department of Transportation will recommend on cars built after 2018.
So while technology is distracting us, it can also save us from ourselves. "NHTSA research shows that in an estimated 94 percent of crashes, the critical cause is a human factor,” the Administration wrote. "In contrast, vehicle-related factors are the critical reason in about 2 percent of crashes.”