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In an effort to make roads safer, 30 US states and the District of Columbia banned texting while driving. But a new study from the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), an Insurance Institute for Highway safety (IIHS) affiliate, reveals a disturbing fact: anti-texting laws have not reduced the number of crashes.

“In fact, such bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes,” the IIHS states in a news release. “This finding is based on comparisons of claims in 4 states before and after texting ban, compared with patterns of claims in nearby states.”

Adrian Lund, president of the IIHS and HLDI explains: “In a perverse twist, crashes increased in 3 of the 4 states we studied after bans were enacted. It’s an indication that texting bans might even increase the risk of texting for drivers who continue to do so despite the laws.”

In The Boston Globe, Lund elaborates further, stating that bans against texting and handheld cell phones are not working, and states must revisit safety laws.

US Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood disagrees. In his blog, Fast Lane, La Hood states: “There are numerous flaws with this ‘study,’ but the most obvious is that they have created a cause and effect that simply doesn’t exist. …This ’study‘ is also inconsistent with research that HLDI-IIHS has relied on in the past, showing that drivers are four times as likely to crash if using a handheld device while driving. What’s more, they don’t actually take into account whether distracted driving behavior went up or down in the four hand-picked states they looked at.”

With texting bans sweeping the nation, it’s logical to expect the number of crashes to decrease. The IIHS suggests that, “Noncompliance is a likely reason texting bans aren’t reducing crashes. Survey results indicate that many drivers, especially younger ones, shrug off these bans. Among 18-24 year-olds, the group most likely to text, 45 percent reported doing so anyway in states that bar all drivers from texting. This is just shy of the 48 percent of drivers who reported texting in states without bans. Many respondents who knew it was illegal to text said they didn’t think police were strongly enforcing the bans.”

In an interview with USA Today, President and CEO of AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety suggests roads are too safe, “and people get lulled into this sense of complacency. The system is fundamentally so safe that most of the time when people do these things they get away with them.”

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