Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex
But the distraction of talking on the phone is not in the handling if the phone, it is in the cognitive nature of holding a phone conversation and what that does to the human brain in terms of multitasking in a way it simply does not do well. There is now plenty of evidence that talking on a cell phone increases your chances of being in an accident compared to holding conversations with passengers and that it makes no statistical difference whether that phone conversation is hands free or not.
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Personally, I am a better driver when conversing on a cell phone than I am when I am conversing with someone in the car. With a person in the car, I tend to glance at them more (especially people in the back seat) and I talk with my hands. On my bluetooth, I can answer and hang up from the steering wheel and see who is calling by glancing at the radio screen. (Or, I could until Chris stole the Mini). But, with a manual car, I also only kept one hand on the wheel most of the time.
My phone is probably the LEAST distracting thing in my vehicle. Dogs, radio/satelite/cd/ipod controls, maps, passengers - all are MUCH more of a distraction.
I admit, I am on my cell phone a LOT throughout the day. It is the nature of my job to be doing other things while talking on the phone. The MOST difficult thing to do is walk dogs while holding the phone up to my ear. That is something I simply cannot do.
It used to be against the law to drive barefoot. It might still be for all I know, but if cops can't hang out on street corners with stop signs that are regularly run and issue tickets, when are they going to police me and my cell phone?
Oh, and we're also supposed to only have 4 pets and license our cats. We have 3 AC officers and one truck to police Long Beach, Seal Beach, Signal Hill, Cypress and Los Alamitos. I wonder why I haven't gotten in trouble yet?
I sound almost libertarian!