The Impact of Handheld Legislation on Traffic Fatalities : Evidence from a Temporal Regression Discontinuity Design

Distracted driving is the leading cause of vehicle crashes in the United States. Lawmakers in several states have responded to this phenomena by implementing laws aimed at restricting the use of various handheld devices while operating a vehicle. In this paper, we utilize the temporal regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of introducing handheld legislation on the level of traffic fatalities. We find consistent evidence that introducing a law which restricts the use of handheld devices while driving results in a 22% reduction in daily traffic fatalities and reduces average fatalities by 0.64 individuals each day. These results are robust to several specification and falsification checks