Cell Phones and Motor Vehicle Fatalities

We examine real-world data on 6,700 motor vehicle crashes and data on cell phone usage in a mid-sized European country. In a non-experimental context, we document a positive correlation at the cell-tower level between call volumes and the likelihood of a nearby motor vehicle accident leading to a serious injury. We demonstrate that these correlations are robust to a series of controls. Scaling our estimates by the number of crashes in our data, we estimate that a 100% increase in call volumes is associated with a 15% to 43% increase in the likelihood of a serious crash.