Auto insurers’ group: Texting bans do not reduce crashes

Adrian Lund, president of  HLDI and the Insurance Institute for
Highway Safety, said texting bans are a bad policy.

“Texting bans haven’t reduced crashes at all,” he said in a statement. “In a perverse twist,
crashes increased in 3 of the 4 states we studied after bans were
enacted. It’s an indication that texting bans might even increase the
risk of texting for drivers who continue to do so despite the laws.”

The Transportation Department has made a strong effort to combat distracted driving, pushing state-level restrictions on how drivers can use their cell phones in the car.

A study last year by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institutef found that when when the drivers texted, their collision risk increase by a factor of 23.