In my state, the phenomenon of attempting to drive while looking at and manipulating one's phone is absolutely epidemic. When a light turns green, the cars in f

In my state, the phenomenon of attempting to drive while looking at and manipulating one's phone is absolutely epidemic. When a light turns green, the cars in front often don't move and the cars behind them often don't honk because they're engaged with their smartphones too. It's particularly disturbing when you're on a 50mph road with one lane in each direction and you pass a car by a few feet going the other way at a closing speed of 100mph and all you see is the other driver's eyelids and the top of their head. The article mentions a 3% increase in deaths since 2011 despite cars getting safer, but 2011 correlates to the start of the total ubiquity of the smartphone as well. On the other hand, I've had some very sketchy Uber/Lyft rides involving extremely late lane changes, almost missing turns/offramps and trying to dive in at the last second. The combination of often younger people who might end up driving for Uber/Lyft, often driving unfamiliar routes, relying on the instructions provided by a phone attached four feet away, while engaged in a conversation with passengers, is probably generally not as safe as you driving yourself along a familiar route. But it would be quite a feat of analysis if anybody were able to disentangle the effect of Uber/Lyft from other changes since 2011.