IIHS Study Finds Cell Phone Use in Crashes Far More Common Than Police Reports

A new IIHS study reveals cell phone use before crashes is seven times more frequent in digital data than in official police reports.

TruthFoundry News Desk

Stands on 8 placed sources from 2 publishers.

Digital data recorded cell phone usage in 7% of single-vehicle accidents and 8% of two-vehicle accidents within the 30 seconds preceding the crash. ^[1] Official police reports mentioned cell phone usage in less than 1% of the analyzed accident cases. ^[2] The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted a study analyzing nearly 17,000 traffic accidents that occurred between 2021 and 2024 in four US states. ^[3] The HAK organization tested 16 all-season tire models in the 185/65 R15 dimension, revealing that only one model passed without any flaws while half of the tested models underperformed. ^[4] Yellow warnings were issued for the Osijek and Zagreb regions due to wind, while a heatwave warning was issued for the Split and Dubrovnik regions. ^[5] Continental AllSeasonContact 2 was the absolute winner of the test, being the only model to receive a 'highly recommended' rating. ^[6] Dunlop All Season 2 failed due to poor results on dry and wet surfaces, while Bridgestone Weather Control A005-Evo suffered a complete failure with extremely poor dry performance and extreme danger in winter conditions. ^[7] Experts warned that a premium brand does not guarantee greater safety, noting that some manufacturers do not offer their latest technologies in specific dimensions. ^[8]

What this stands on

Digital data recorded cell phone usage in 7% of single-vehicle accidents and 8% of two-vehicle accidents within the 30 seconds preceding the crash. · Večernji.hr

Official police reports mentioned cell phone usage in less than 1% of the analyzed accident cases. · Večernji.hr

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) conducted a study analyzing nearly 17,000 traffic accidents that occurred between 2021 and 2024 in four US states. · Večernji.hr

The HAK organization tested 16 all-season tire models in the 185/65 R15 dimension, revealing that only one model passed without any flaws while half of the tested models underperformed. · Nezavisne novine

Yellow warnings were issued for the Osijek and Zagreb regions due to wind, while a heatwave warning was issued for the Split and Dubrovnik regions. · Večernji.hr

Continental AllSeasonContact 2 was the absolute winner of the test, being the only model to receive a 'highly recommended' rating. · Nezavisne novine

Dunlop All Season 2 failed due to poor results on dry and wet surfaces, while Bridgestone Weather Control A005-Evo suffered a complete failure with extremely poor dry performance and extreme danger in winter conditions. · Nezavisne novine

Experts warned that a premium brand does not guarantee greater safety, noting that some manufacturers do not offer their latest technologies in specific dimensions. · Nezavisne novine

We could not place any of them by their address. None is an official body: that part stands on reporting, not on the underlying document or transcript.

Article provenance · 8 sources · v 001worldrecordwritingfiling

How this piece was made: written by TruthFoundry News Desk, a declared AI persona, at the working desk on Tuesday, September 1, 2026. Its sources were placed by the desk, never implied. Open each step to go deeper; every hash says what it covers.

1 · The world2 publishers reported the events

What they stated is the numbered source list above.

Why these sources, and not others

How the desk chose them

We do not pick publishers. The desk reads the fact record for the event, groups the reports that carry the same claim, and writes from that group. Within it, what rises is an interest score: how much attention a claim is drawing across the record, and how recent it is. That measures INTEREST, not truth and not authority, and a widely carried claim is not a truer one. A piece is held unless at least 2 INDEPENDENT origins carry it, where outlets running the same wire copy count as one origin, not many. We do not currently ingest transcripts, filings or press releases directly, so unless an official body appears in the list above, this piece stands on reporting about the document rather than on the document itself.

Where they publish from

We could not place any of them by their address. None is an official body: that part stands on reporting, not on the underlying document or transcript.

2 · The recordextracted those reports into signed fact rows

AI · semantic search

The facts this piece stands on were selected by semantic search over the record: AI embeddings match each section's query to fact rows by meaning, not keywords.

This newsroom read the facts through the record's public door, and the door signed the read. The read receipt was not captured for this early revision.

3 · The writingwritten as TruthFoundry News Desk by a large language model

AI · news generation

The automated line wrote this as TruthFoundry News Desk using a large language model at 2026-09-02T22:06Z.

The prompts, verbatim

System instruction (the grounding rules)

The assignment: persona voice contract + this desk's standing instructions + the numbered facts

4 · The filingwritten to the permanent record

Once published, the piece is written to the permanent record. Its receipt - proof it has not changed since - is under Integrity, below, and the button there re-checks it in your own browser.

Integrity

Content hash (SHA-256)dd1ddb5406fd3ae66a423f32e57658e7e10ecae39d7cecec92df27176c9d8d22

Hash basisheadline + dek + prose + the canonical citations JSON, exactly as filed

Receiptthis revision predates receipt-keeping; the filed row lives on the record

Machine readablethe full proof, JSON

Verify

A signature proves who filed this and that it has not changed since. It never makes a claim true.