Last week’s Blackberry blackout saved lives.

In Dubai, traffic accidents dipped 20%. For Abu Dhabi, the decrease was 40%. Considering that there is approximately 1 traffic accident every 3 minutes in Dubai and a traffic fatality every 2 days in Abu Dhabi, safety soared.

A fascinating, unintentional experiment.

The Economic Lesson

The implications of the Blackberry outage are multiple. Municipal expense, insurance, regulation and privacy are only several of the issues touched by how we use smartphones.

All though take us to the economic definition of cost. When we choose to use our smartphones everywhere, what are we sacrificing? 

An Economic Question: Listing costs and benefits, assess the impact of smartphones on our lives.