Re: Insurance companies watching
if not definitive, still pretty significant
Depends on the nature of avoided accidents? If most the avoided accidents were modest fender-benders, then there's a financial and convenience benefit. But only by reducing the incidence or severity of injury accidents will they improve safety. Lets see what the data shows.
In this respect we should consider what evidence actually does show. Take the moral panic over mobile phones and driving. All the announced studies declare it to be a huge risk factor, with figures between 4x and 20x more likley to have an accident. Yet certainly on Britain's crowded roads the number of injuries and fatalities has dropped hugely between the (effective) advent of smartphones in 2007. Obviously there's all the other road safety interventions, but still seems to me that the evidence doesn't match the claims of the risk (not that I'm condoning use of phones whilst driving).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
