The National (United Arab Emirates) reports that traffic crashes in Abu Dhabi were cut 40% in the period when Blackberry services were down in the country last week. It should be mentioned that even though alcohol is hard to come by in the emirate, traffic crash rates are shockingly high (a fatal crash every other day). From the article:
Brig Gen Al Harethi said: “Accidents were reduced by 40 per cent and the fact that BlackBerry services were down definitely contributed to that. … Absolutely nothing has happened in the past week in terms of killings on the road and we’re really glad about that. People are slowly starting to realise the dangers of using their phone while driving. The roads became much safer when BlackBerry stopped working.”
Wow! I wonder if this report will boost people’s will power when it comes to keeping their hands free.
Wow! What a huge reduction, I wonder if it’s just based on one week data though. I guess now people can also study the impacts of sending messages using Siri versus Blackberry 😀