title: Effects of a Driver Cellphone Ban on Overall, Handheld, and Hands-Free Cellphone Use While Driving: New Evidence from Canada.
abstract: We provide new evidence on the effects of increasingly common driver cellphone bans on self-reported overall, handheld, and hands-free cellphone use while driving by studying Ontario, Canada, which instituted a 3-month education campaign in November 2009 followed by a binding driver cellphone ban in February 2010. Using residents of Alberta as a control group in a difference-in-differences framework, we find visual and regression-based evidence that Ontario's cellphone ban significantly reduced overall and handheld cellphone use. We also find that the policies significantly increased hands-free cellphone use. The reductions in overall and handheld use are driven exclusively by women, whereas the increases in hands-free use are much larger for men. Our results provide the first direct evidence that cellphone bans have the unintended effect of inducing substitution to hands-free devices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
authors.forename: Christopher S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Carpenter
authors.affiliation: Program in Health Services and Systems Research, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Hai V
authors.initials: HV
authors.lastname: Nguyen
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000328:Adult; D000416:Alberta; D001288:Attention; D001334:Automobile Driving / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D040421:Cell Phone / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009864:Ontario; D012737:Sex Factors
keywords: ban; cellphone; quasi-experiment