Yesterday the NTSB recommended an
outright ban on cell phones in cars (including hands free).
Sure a ban would save lives but so would dropping the national speed limit to 10mph. It makes me wonder, what is an acceptable level of risk?
Americans take
1,100,000,000 car trips per day. That's 1.1 Billion trips every day
In 2008
448,000 people were injured and 5,474 people were killed by distracted driving.
That means that on any given day, your chances of being injured by a distracted driving is 0.000001%. Literately one on a million and I'd guess that number drops dramatically if you are not the one doing the distracted driving.
Your chance of being killed is 0.00000001% or 1 in 100 Million
Those are pretty slim odds.