Thread: Cell phones and driving

I remember when cell phones first came out (and drunk driving enforcement first became very popular in the US), an independent experiment was conducted comparing a drunken driver, someone using a cell phone and a third driver who did nothing but fully concentrate on the road.

The cell phone user scored overall just about even with the drunken driver.

This knowledge has been around for years and years.

Why is it still legal? I can only speculate. But at the time of the study there probably wasn't enough people killed with a direct relationship between cell phones and driver error.

The city in which I live in has recently banned cell phone use while driving. If caught, you get yourself a nice $300 ticket... and it is still business as usual out there on the streets.

"Using" a cell phone is a very wide range of things. Talking to somebody through a carkit or headset feels less intrusive to me than typing a text message. The latter I do in a traffic jam at most, if it's really important, they'd have called, wouldn't they?