Study finds cost of cell phone accidents equals benefits

WASHINGTON -- Researchers say increased cell phone use has led to more crashes caused by drivers on the phone, but the value people place on being able to call from the road roughly equals the accidents' cost.

Opponents of banning cell phone usage by drivers have cited studies that showed the benefit of car calls outweighed the toll from such accidents -- medical bills and property damage, for example.

Harvard researchers, drawing on previous research involving cell phones and government figures for auto accidents, says in a study there is a growing public health risk from the reliance on cell phones in cars. The number of cell phone subscribers has grown from 94 million in 2000 to more than 128 million.

Data on the number of crashes caused by cell phones is incomplete, said the study being released Monday by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. But it suggested that drivers talking on their phones are responsible for about 6 percent of U.S. auto accidents each year, killing an estimated 2,600 people and injuring 330,000 others.

The figure was reached using current cell phone usage estimates to update a 1997 study. That study looked at phone records of Canadian drivers involved in crashes to see if they were making calls at the time.

The cell phone industry found fault with the projections and their connection to wireless phones.

"It's sort of assumptions built on assumptions," said Kimberly Kuo, spokeswoman for the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. "There are not a lot of substantial findings that allow us to make policy conclusions."

The Harvard researchers also updated previous studies on the economic costs associated with accidents caused by cell phones, such as medical bills and loss of life. The costs added up to $43 billion -- about the same as the researchers arrived at for the value that cell phone owners put on their phones.