when I lived in DC, its against the law to talk on your cell phone while driving, and it use to make me so mad, especially when you are sitting in traffic for 3 hours while your like 3 miles from you house, but anyway when I moved to St Louis, I took up the habit again…got into a nasty car accident, and totaled my jeep, miraculously avoided 2 telephone poles, and a cable box, cut thru a busy intersection, slammed into a tree on someone’s private property all without getting another car involved, I have driven the road so many times and when your yakking away your mind is on auto pilot and the one thing that threw me off was the light above the stop sign went out…..made me realize that no call is that important to risk your life!!!

Texting and dialing are the real, root causes of driver distraction. Not just talking on the cell phone, or picking up a call. As in the awful truck accident on 270 of last summer, the driver said he was on the phone, but records would probaly show what was fialed to admit: texting or dialing was involved, which studies will show is the leading cause of multi-second distractions…the cause of a crash. Tenths of a second, or one second to pick up a phone would rarely cause the necessary distraction time, unless the driver is already in someone’s trunk.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Legislation prohibiting “in-car” cell phone use? Nah. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The fix would be to restrict TEXTING or DIALING while the vehicle is IN MOTION… that’s the key. A first amendment might be “in-car” cell phone use only for drivers over 21.
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How is this any different from talking with someone in your own vehicle??

Your brain will still operate the same, analyzing, evaluating, a conversations response etc. The only difference is the physical act of holding the phone, and some people cannot multitask a hand-eye coordination action well.

If you do not feel comfortable at all doing it, then please do not.

Now texting while driving is different, I hope people have enough common sense to stop that. I will admit, I have done it in the past, and I am going to make an effort to stop. Text while you are parked, or at the VERY least if you are at a red light, but put the phone down when it is time to drive.

My wife used to get mad at me when I did not pay attention to her when she would talk to me while I’m driving and I would tell her that I not ignoring her but concentrating on driving. Now she harps on people who talk on the cell phone while driving and I tell her “Now you understand why I don’t pay attention to you while I’m driving!”

This activity definitely should be outlawed in all 50 states, given more than enough studies showing that a motorist on a cell phone is just as impaired, attention-wise, as someone driving legally drunk. Some people, in response to a claim like this, invariably play the devil’s advocate, arguing then that other things should also be outlawed while driving a vehicle, most notably any conversation with a passenger. But there’s no comparison; it’s faulty reasoning. The difference here is that you’ve got a second set of eyes — if not more — watching the road in addition to yours (assuming your passenger isn’t blind or legally blind). Of course we have to be reasonable. Can police target a motorist changing a compact disc in a vehicle, if he or she isn’t driving erratically or hasn’t caused an accident? I don’t think so, although there are general laws against motorists taking part in activites that impact their driving ability. Nevertheless, maybe we need to stake out middle-ground here. Maybe talking on a cell phone should be outlawed only if there isn’t another legal adult without compromised vision in the vehicle? Undoubtedly emergencies could be excepted. All this is probably moot, though. Nothing is likely to be done on the federal level. The cell phone lobby is too powerful and our congressmen who do head to Capitol Hill with a backbone seem to have it devolve in time.

EJ Rotert - This shouldn’t be a federal issue regardless. Most things should be reserved to the states.

Matt - I find a phone conversation different. One reason is only one ear is involved (and one side of the brain) and I have to concentrate more, and I’m guessing extra work is involved to imagine the other person’s existence. Additionally, someone in person will understand why you are pausing the conversation to deal with something. Phones lend themselves to constant talking to avoid lulls.

I don’t think you need specific laws against phones. It’s not illegal to drink and drive, just to be too drunk to drive correctly. If that truck driver was reading a paper and caused an accident, I would think charges would be filed based on negligence or something else - basically increasing risk through bad behavior. If the cause is inattentiveness due to a phone, same thing.

If you are going to ban cell phones in cars, you will also have to ban other things such as having a child in a car seat, smoking, reading and a host of other things that we all do. Coming to work on Hwy. 70, I see more mothers trying to quiet the kids in the back seat while driving. They turn around to try to amuse the child to quite crying while they are driving across all of the lanes slowing down and not even knowing it. Getting a cigarette out of the pack and lighting it takes longer than pressing a button on a cell phone. It goes on and on. If you are not ready to stop all things that are distracting, leave it alone. What is distracting to one may not be to the other. Accidents are usually caused by daydreaming for one reason or the other. That’s why they call them accidents. You can’t fix half of a problem.

If you believe that Drunk Driving should be illegal then you should also believe Talking on the Phone while Driving should also be illegal.

It has been shown it is just as if not more dangerous than a BAC of .08. It now causes more accidents nation wide than anything else.

The study done was scientific and conclusive, and it wasn’t the first one that made a connection between accident rates and cell phone use. And it’s not that I care what you do, it’s that I care what happens to me and my family when you do it. I would like to see phone use prohibited while people are operating a motor vehicle.

first tom brings up a good point though about all the other distractions that are found everyday in cars across St Louis. All drivers should limit distractions when they are driving. How many of us turn off the radio when it starts raining hard or we are getting close to a turn that we have never made before? I think we all realize that cell phones are a distraction if we are honest with ourselves. Of course, I have also been driving home from work and realized that I just went three or four miles and have no memory of it (like I was on autopilot)…I think we’ve all been there too.

Since someone will eventually say it, should we ban car radios too? Isn’t that similiar?

In the end, the only thing I can truly control is me. I make sure I am not distracted and I watch the other cars as much as I can. How you would enforce such a ban is beyond me.

I do not believe that talking on a cell phone while driving is like driving drunk. For one, the physiological elements are vastly different.

Talking on a cell phone is simply a form of multitasking. It differs little from talking with others in the vehicle, adjusting auxiliary controls like the heat or air conditioning, adjusting the radio/CD player, taking a sip of the beverage in their cupholder or a puff from their cigarette, or thinking about other matters while behind the wheel.

The idea that all are incapable of talking on a cell phone while driving is just as stupid and logically indefensible as that of assuming all are capable. It, however, is far more profitable for governmental entities, and far more appealing to the busybodies in government and society, to claim no one can safely drive while using a cell phone.