Smartphones are killing Americans, but nobody's counting fatalities
Jennifer Smith doesn’t like the term ‘accident.’ It implies too much chance and too little culpability. A ‘crash’ killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up cat food. The other driver, a 20-year-old college student, ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone, a distraction that he immediately admitted and cited as the catalyst of the fatal event. “ He was remorseful,” Smith, now 43, said. “He never changed his story.” Yet in federal records, the death isn’t attributed to distraction or mobile-phone use. It’s just another line item on the grim annual toll taken by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration [NHTSA] — one of 37,262 that year. Three months later, Smith quit her job as a realtor and formed Stopdistractions.org, a nonprofit lobbying and support group. Her intent was to make the tragic loss of her mother an anomaly. To that end, she has been wildly unsuccessful. Nine year...