UAE Police Claim BlackBerry Outage Made Roads Safer 206
An anonymous reader writes "Road traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi and Dubai plummeted last week — and the local police have a theory as to why: drivers' BlackBerrys weren't working. Police in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have claimed that last week's worldwide BlackBerry outage, which frustrated business people around the world who were unable to communicate with their colleagues, had one positive result — less texting and reading of emails by people who should have been concentrating on driving instead. There could be other factors at play, however. For instance, popular UAE soccer player Theyab Awana was killed in a high speed crash near Abu Dhabi in September, amid claims that he was sending a message on his BlackBerry when he hit a lorry. The football star's father, Awana Ahmad Al Mosabi, made an emotional plea to people not to use smartphones while driving, and a Facebook campaign against the use of BlackBerry Messenger while driving has grown in popularity."
Pay attention to the road! (Score:4, Interesting)
Having seen people swerving from lane to lane while talking or texting, there's no doubt in my mind cell usage while driving should be banned.
But I'm amazed that Abu Dhabi and Dubai have such a high penetration of Blackberries in their country that the outage could actually make a difference in road safety statistics. That's just amazing to me.
I wonder what would happen to the safety stats if all cell phones were disabled for a day as an experiment? (Not that it'll ever happen.)
Re:"campaign against the use of ... while driving" (Score:4, Interesting)
You've never used a full-sized Blackberry (Bold, Tour), have you?
So, it was the fault of them not using full-sized keyboard BBs that was the problem? And you now feel safe texting while driving?