Econometricians will rule the world eventually

It sometimes seems that more interesting economic research is done by econometricians than theoreticians, these days. The way to make your name now is to have a knack for finding inventive experimental designs. Here is an interesting paper about the effect of cellphone use on car-crash rates. It uses the discontinuity in cellphone usage rates across peak/off-peak times to evaluate the effect that cellphone usage has on crash rates. In contrast to the prevailing literature, and quite counter-intuitively, they find no significant effect. Another reason for governments to be hesitant about hasty regulation?