Not to be overly suspicious, but it may be a hyped-up or cherry-picked statistic. The two sources in the article are the Chief of Dubai Police, and the director of the Abu Dhabi Police traffic department, who didn't give any further details; the paper itself is state run.<p>"Two weeks ago, Abu Dhabi Police announced a campaign against motorists who use their phones while at the wheel." ... "Gen Tamim likewise warned that Dubai Police will soon be using electronic evidence against drivers who cause accidents while using their smart devices." ... "The precise statistics for traffic accidents in the two emirates this week were not revealed to The National."
Over the past couple of years I've noticed that when I pass someone driving erratically or abnormally slow, they are more often than not futzing with their phone (texting or talking). This is the kind of driving that ten years ago I would have attributed to drunkenness.<p>It's a serious factor in my desire to move somewhere where I don't need a car to get around.
Could it be that the outage failed to summon a certain non-trivial amount of people to venture out in their cars (for meetings, dinners, etc.), reducing the overall number of cars on the road to begin with?
As a person who has never texted (seriously) I've started to notice an alarming number of people holding and looking at their phones while they drive in my town.<p>Makes me afraid to use the bicycle lane anymore.<p>I sure hope police/insurance companies are looking at cellphone records after accidents to fine people appropriately for this kind of behavior.
As Paul Graham noticed earlier, computers became something like TV on the working desktop, smartphones are even a more danger. I hope in my lifetime I'll see something new to displace smartphones/tablets and make them look old like TV now, and be less dangerous and less addictive.
This weekend I narrowly avoided accidents on multiple occasions with drivers that were more than deeply occupied in their smartphones. One driver blocked a major intersection against the light while another destroyed several cones in a road construction zone. Maybe the problem was worse than normal due to the release of a new popular model?
That's remarkable, given that the roads in that country are not nearly bad. The question one should ask though is what can technology do to fix that public safety hazard?
In my sleepy little town at any red light when traffic stops for the light (I hope!) it's as if someone said "Let us pray." and all the drivers bow their heads.
Having visited Abu Dhabi for a little more than a month, I don't find this too surprising. A lot of the drivers there are insane and coupled with a cell phone, they're killing machines.