How Safe are the City Streets?

Since I'm not in Philadelphia for the summer, I try to read Philly.com as much as I can, to try to stay connected to the city.

Today I came across an article titled, "Hell on Wheels," and immediately started reading. The article says that Allstate has named Philadelphia the city with the most reckless drivers in the whole nation. This information surprised me, because I thought that New York would have the worst drivers! But no, my city came out on top.

Even though this information was surprising, what came next in the article was even more interesting. Next was a part called "Broad Street distractions", and the person interviewed was a Temple Professor named Frank Farley. These are some of his quotes:

"People are in the middle of the street selling your wonderful newspaper to drivers who stop their cars and get their money out, regardless of the traffic coming up behind them."

"Other people are flogging flowers and, around Temple, pies and bottled water," he said. "I've seen drivers get very distracted when they suddenly decide they need to get some flowers without letting the drivers behind them know."

Even though the information he gave was truthful, Farley was being interviewd via cell phone, as he was DRIVING down Broad Street!

Isn't cell phone use one of the biggest driving distractions/contributors to collisions there is?