Cautions about car telephones and collisions.

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 . . . Keywords: Driver distraction; Language: en

[1]  J M Robins,et al.  Conceptual problems in the definition and interpretation of attributable fractions. , 1988, American journal of epidemiology.

[2]  Toxic tort litigation: medical and scientific principles in causation. , 1990, American journal of epidemiology.

[3]  M. Maclure The case-crossover design: a method for studying transient effects on the risk of acute events. , 1991, American journal of epidemiology.

[4]  K A Brookhuis,et al.  The effects of mobile telephoning on driving performance. , 1991, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[5]  A J McKnight,et al.  The effect of cellular phone use upon driver attention. , 1993, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[6]  R. Goldberg,et al.  Triggering of acute myocardial infarction by heavy physical exertion. Protection against triggering by regular exertion. Determinants of Myocardial Infarction Onset Study Investigators. , 1993, The New England journal of medicine.

[7]  T R Miller,et al.  Costs and functional consequences of U.S. roadway crashes. , 1993, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[8]  H Alm,et al.  The effects of a mobile telephone task on driver behaviour in a car following situation. , 1995, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[9]  J. Robins,et al.  Control sampling strategies for case-crossover studies: an assessment of relative efficiency. , 1995, American journal of epidemiology.

[10]  J M Violanti,et al.  Cellular phones and traffic accidents: an epidemiological approach. , 1996, Accident; analysis and prevention.

[11]  R. Tibshirani,et al.  Association between cellular-telephone calls and motor vehicle collisions. , 1997, The New England journal of medicine.