Motorcyclists account for a much higher proportion of traffic fatalities relative to the share of motorcycles among all motor vehicles and vehicle miles driven in the U.S. In this paper, we posit that motorcyclists may be particularly vulnerable to the risks of distracted driving by others. Specifically, we examine whether state-specific texting/handheld bans significantly influence motorcyclist fatalities in the U.S. We use state-specific traffic fatality data in the U.S. (2005-2015, N = 550) from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) merged with state-specific characteristics, texting/handheld device laws, and other traffic policies. Although research is mixed on the effectiveness of texting/handheld bans for overall traffic fatalities, our findings indicate that motorcyclists are at elevated risk of being a victim of distracted driving and thus could greatly benefit from these policies. This result is driven mainly by multiple-vehicle crashes (e.g., car hitting motorcycle) as opposed to single-vehicle crashes. Policy makers should consider strengthening texting/handheld bans along with their enforcement to improve safety and save lives, especially among motorcyclists. .
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 178. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 July 2019.
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Altmetric has tracked 32,041,085 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 13,267 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 19.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its peers.
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