CAR crashes dropped 40% in Middle East during Blackberry outage

Damien Gayle
Mail Online
October 19, 2011

Blackberry’s data centre crash may have proved catastrophic for the firms and workers who rely on the smartphones’ email services to do business.

But while the disruption may have sounded the death-knell for Research In Motion, the phones’ embattled maker, it may have helped save lives elsewhere.

In the United Arab Emirates, a dramatic fall in traffic accidents has been directly linked to the three-day blackout of Blackberry services. In the kingdom of Dubai, the number of crashes fell 20 per cent on the days Blackberry users were unable to use its service.

In nearby Abu Dhabi, meanwhile, the fall was even more dramatic, with the number of accidents plummetting 40 per cent – with no fatal crashes at all. Usually there is a traffic accident every three minutes in Dubai, while in Abu Dhabi someone is killed in a crash every two days.

Read full report here

This article was posted: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 6:57 am

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