I heard that on the radio this afternoon on my lunch break - shortly after it was announced. I couldn't help but think that it is likely intended to be a revenue generator for the city...
How often do you frequent Detroit proper? If this happened i would pretty much just avoid the city and stay in the burbs...and I don't like the burbs.
Sanjay, I swear there are times I wish to pummel you senseless. The charts make the case for NO government intervention. More gov't intervention = lower economic growth
Silly man. In general government intervention does correlate with less growth. But you just floated a hypothesis, and put up the charts to prove it, that shows the reverse.
Then, when I proved that, you harrumphed that it was just data or some such, because you don't really have any grasp what those p-values _mean_. Nice.
I appeal to Doink: the statistics argument down there is right, no? (As I said there, there is a flaw: but it's not in the stats).
A friend of mine just did a regression analysis of cell-phone restrictions and car accidents and found a highly significant negative correlation. Cities and states which pass laws like Detroit see a statistically significant decrease in traffic accidents and fatalities, other things held constant. Low p-values and all. No endogeneity, no misspecification or other such caveats.
I don't make it to Detroit proper very often - last year when I was in school down there, i was in the D four nights a week.
I think it's a pain in the ass more than anything - and I've heard alot of conflicting evidence on each side of the aisle as far as the efficacy of such laws in preventing traffic accidents.
You might hate the burbs, but you'd hate detroit even more. It is a testament to the failure of central planning. It has some of (if not the absolute) the highest property taxes in the state, and their city services are worse than ever. It manages to collect only about 2/3 of all the taxes it bills, which is about 25% less than most cities expect. You can go miles without seeing a grocery store, a movie theater, a gas station - all the basic niceties which would possibly induce someone to live there...
We have that ban in Australia (in all states i'm fairly sure) as well - if you use your mobile without a headset or speaker, it's a nasty fine and 3 demerit points (you get 12 in total) off your license.
I don't like the ban so much, because when i see someone changing lanes without indicating or driving 10-20km/h under the limit, it gives me an even better excuse to abuse them if it's because they're on their phone.
I saw a mythbusters show comparing drink driving to talking on your phone - they found that talking on your phone is just as dangerous as having a BAC of .08.
I also read somewhere that some people have the habit of picturing the person on the other end of the phone whilst talking to them, so a headset wouldn't make a difference for them. I hope they don't ban headsets because of this though - i certainly haven't developed that habit.
the one piece that I hear frequently - is not supportive really of either side - basically what it suggests is that there aren't enough jurisdictions where they keep accurate track of cell-phone use as a "cause" of accidents.
The lack of a proper control group could certainly invalidate the statistics, but on the other hand, it could just as easily work the other way.
DI, I think the famous "as dangerous as drunk driving" stuff _is_ controlled, because it's a lab statistic not (say) an IIHS one. Anecdotaly, as far as I can tell every time some fucktard almost wastes you (in my case, _does_ waste you) in a car, or lefts in front of you at an intersection, he/she is yakking on a cell phone.
My preferred remedy for this has been to either make you automatically liable for an accident if you'reusing a cell phone at the time, or at least make the information available for legal purposes where presumably it will severely prejudice your case (in the same way that, if you get rear-ended, even if it's your bad, the other guy is going to have a real real hard time not ending up liable.)
Sanjay, you either quit it with the cursing or I'll open up a can of Tamil Tigers on your ass and ban you from this group...then again, you probably are a member of the Tamils.
Apologies, Aaron, you haven;t mentioned sensitivities to cursign before (in fact I think you've iindulged). Perhpas it's just "fucktard"? In any event, fine, I'll keep it all family friendly.
13 comments:
I heard that on the radio this afternoon on my lunch break - shortly after it was announced. I couldn't help but think that it is likely intended to be a revenue generator for the city...
I dunno, Sgt. Cap -- big talk from a guy who just put up graphs making a case for government intervention.....
Hey Doink,
How often do you frequent Detroit proper? If this happened i would pretty much just avoid the city and stay in the burbs...and I don't like the burbs.
Sanjay, I swear there are times I wish to pummel you senseless. The charts make the case for NO government intervention. More gov't intervention = lower economic growth
Silly man. In general government intervention does correlate with less growth. But you just floated a hypothesis, and put up the charts to prove it, that shows the reverse.
Then, when I proved that, you harrumphed that it was just data or some such, because you don't really have any grasp what those p-values _mean_. Nice.
I appeal to Doink: the statistics argument down there is right, no? (As I said there, there is a flaw: but it's not in the stats).
A friend of mine just did a regression analysis of cell-phone restrictions and car accidents and found a highly significant negative correlation. Cities and states which pass laws like Detroit see a statistically significant decrease in traffic accidents and fatalities, other things held constant. Low p-values and all. No endogeneity, no misspecification or other such caveats.
Send me a chart if he has them, I'll throw it up.
Make sure you explain the chart very very slowly and don't use big words.
I don't make it to Detroit proper very often - last year when I was in school down there, i was in the D four nights a week.
I think it's a pain in the ass more than anything - and I've heard alot of conflicting evidence on each side of the aisle as far as the efficacy of such laws in preventing traffic accidents.
You might hate the burbs, but you'd hate detroit even more. It is a testament to the failure of central planning. It has some of (if not the absolute) the highest property taxes in the state, and their city services are worse than ever. It manages to collect only about 2/3 of all the taxes it bills, which is about 25% less than most cities expect. You can go miles without seeing a grocery store, a movie theater, a gas station - all the basic niceties which would possibly induce someone to live there...
We have that ban in Australia (in all states i'm fairly sure) as well - if you use your mobile without a headset or speaker, it's a nasty fine and 3 demerit points (you get 12 in total) off your license.
I don't like the ban so much, because when i see someone changing lanes without indicating or driving 10-20km/h under the limit, it gives me an even better excuse to abuse them if it's because they're on their phone.
I saw a mythbusters show comparing drink driving to talking on your phone - they found that talking on your phone is just as dangerous as having a BAC of .08.
I also read somewhere that some people have the habit of picturing the person on the other end of the phone whilst talking to them, so a headset wouldn't make a difference for them. I hope they don't ban headsets because of this though - i certainly haven't developed that habit.
the one piece that I hear frequently - is not supportive really of either side - basically what it suggests is that there aren't enough jurisdictions where they keep accurate track of cell-phone use as a "cause" of accidents.
The lack of a proper control group could certainly invalidate the statistics, but on the other hand, it could just as easily work the other way.
DI, I think the famous "as dangerous as drunk driving" stuff _is_ controlled, because it's a lab statistic not (say) an IIHS one. Anecdotaly, as far as I can tell every time some fucktard almost wastes you (in my case, _does_ waste you) in a car, or lefts in front of you at an intersection, he/she is yakking on a cell phone.
My preferred remedy for this has been to either make you automatically liable for an accident if you'reusing a cell phone at the time, or at least make the information available for legal purposes where presumably it will severely prejudice your case (in the same way that, if you get rear-ended, even if it's your bad, the other guy is going to have a real real hard time not ending up liable.)
Sanjay, you either quit it with the cursing or I'll open up a can of Tamil Tigers on your ass and ban you from this group...then again, you probably are a member of the Tamils.
Apologies, Aaron, you haven;t mentioned sensitivities to cursign before (in fact I think you've iindulged). Perhpas it's just "fucktard"? In any event, fine, I'll keep it all family friendly.
Always with the racial shot. How admirable.
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