A study released Tuesday by the Highway Loss Data Institute found no reductions in crashes in states that put laws in place to ban texting while driving.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, released its status report on the texting ban and its effectiveness during the annual meeting of the Governors Highway Safety Assn. in Kansas City, Mo., this week.

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has dismissed the group’s latest study, saying the report is “completely misleading” and that texting bans, when enforced, are working.

In its report, the HLDI reported it found the texting bans enacted by 30 states and the District of Columbia since 2004 were not effective and that 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 finding was based on comparison of claims in four states—California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Washington—before and after the texting ban was put in place compared with patterns of claims in nearby states with no ban.

In its study, researchers at Arlington, Va.-based HLDI calculated rates of collision claims for vehicles up to nine years old during the months immediately before and after driver texting was banned in those four states, while collecting comparable data in nearby states without a ban during the same time period.

“Texting bans haven’t reduced crashes at all,” said Adrian Lund, president of HLDI and the IIHS, in a statement. “In a perverse twist, crashes increased in three of the four states we studied after bans were enacted. It’s an indication that texting bans might even increase risk of texting for drivers who continue to do so despite laws.”

Mr. Lund and the report contest the assertion that bans on texting or hand-held phones are effective or have reduced crash risk because they aren’t enforced. He noted that this doesn’t mean it’s safe to text and drive, but that the bans “aren’t reducing the risk.”

Mr. LaHood said in a statement that the HLDI and IIHS have been working to discredit national anti-distracted-driving efforts during the past year. He said the organizations’ research fails to coincide with DOT research that shows how deadly distracted driving can be and how it is declining in cities where laws are coupled with enforcement.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, distracted driving-related crashes killed nearly 5,500 people in 2009. It also reported that distracted driving-related fatalities jumped from 10% to 16% of all traffic fatalities between 2005 and 2008 and that 2009 was the first time in four years that distracted driving fatalities stopped rising.

Despite DOT efforts to prove that tough enforcement of the laws can make a difference in results, a survey by the HLDI indicated that many drivers, particularly 18-24-year-olds, still are texting in states that have bans. Nearly 45% of those surveyed reported they still texted despite the bans, which HLDI said is just short of the 48% of 18- to 24-year-olds who reported texting in states without bans.

“But this doesn’t explain why crashes increased after texting bans,” Mr. Lund said in a statement. “If drivers were disregarding the bans, the crash patterns should have remained steady. So clearly drivers did respond to the bans somehow, and what they might have been doing is moving their phones down and out of sight when they texted, in recognition that what they were doing was illegal.”

This increased the risk of a collision, Mr. Lund said, because it increased the time the driver’s eyes were taken off the road.

The full report can be found at www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4510.pdf.