by Ray Bernard. A new research study published in the British Medical Journal finds that drivers using phones are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves.
Male and female drivers experienced about the same increase in risk from using a phone. So did drivers older and younger than 30 and drivers using hand-held and hands-free phones."
Eighty-nine percent of the crashes involved other vehicles. More than half of the injured drivers reported that their crashes occurred within 10 minutes of the start of the trip.
The study was conducted in the Western Australian city of Perth by the US-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
