Regarding this thread, I really want to caution on the desire to automatically assign worse car crash rates to covid-19 infections, or any other specific cause.
Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own.
There are a lot more reasons that car crash rates can be getting worse. For one thing, they have been trending upwards since smartphones have become prevalent. Car crashes weren't trending down for some time before covid-19. Also, the number of screens installed on automobile dashboards is increasing every year.
Still, I won't automatically assign blame to smartphones or automotive screens unless someone at least attempting to use the scientific method weighs in on the subject, because our intuitions about statistics are often really, really wrong.
Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own.
There are a lot more reasons that car crash rates can be getting worse. For one thing, they have been trending upwards since smartphones have become prevalent. Car crashes weren't trending down for some time before covid-19. Also, the number of screens installed on automobile dashboards is increasing every year.
Still, I won't automatically assign blame to smartphones or automotive screens unless someone at least attempting to use the scientific method weighs in on the subject, because our intuitions about statistics are often really, really wrong.