The impact of Illinois’ comprehensive handheld phone ban on talking on handheld and handsfree cellphones while driving

Abstract

ABSTRACTIntroductionDistracted driving has been linked to multiple driving decrements and is responsible for thousands of motor vehicle fatalities annually. Most US states have enacted restrictions on cellphone use while driving, the strictest of which prohibit any manual operation of a cellphone while driving. Illinois enacted such a law in 2014. To better understand how this law affected cellphone behaviors while driving, we estimated associations between Illinois’ handheld phone ban and self-reported talking on handheld, handsfree, and any cellphone (handheld or handsfree) while driving.MethodsWe leveraged data from annual administrations of the Traffic Safety Culture Index from 2012-2017 in Illinois and a set of control states. We cast the data into a difference-in-differences (DID) modeling framework, which compared Illinois to control states in terms of pre-to post-intervention changes in the proportion of drivers who self-reported the three outcomes. We fit separate models for each outcome, and fit additional models to the subset of drivers who talk on cellphones while driving.ResultsIn Illinois, the pre-to post-intervention decrease in the drivers’ probability of self-reporting talking on a handheld phone was significantly more extreme than that of drivers in control states (DID estimate −0.22; 95% CI −0.31, −0.13). Among drivers who talk on cellphones while driving, those in Illinois exhibited a more extreme increase in the probability of talking on a handsfree phone while driving than those control states (DID estimate 0.13; 95% CI 0.03, 0.23).ConclusionsOur results suggest that Illinois’ handheld phone ban reduced talking on handheld phones while driving and corroborated the hypothesis that the ban promoted harm-reduction via substitution from handheld to handsfree phones among drivers who talk on the phone while driving.Practical ApplicationsOur findings should encourage other states to enact comprehensive handheld phone bans to improve traffic safety.