As if driving while using a cell-phone wasn't bad enough ...

[Spyder]

I eat and drink in the car all the time, but I usually tell the people I'm driving with to shut up if I'm doing so, since I know I can't handle both conversation and food consumption responsibility. For that matter, in city driving and when it's very congested I'll usually ask passengers to do the same--as this study proved it's far easier (four times easier) to be distracted by conversation with passengers than eaten; cellphone usage ought rightfully banned in all respects, and hands-free devices should also be banned.

Yeah, eating's quite primal, it's not something that takes a considerable amount of brain power.

Most people can get away with stuffing a candy bar in their face or sipping coffee or tea from a travel mug (provided the car's got good cup holders and obviously not both at once).

However, when you hear stories about people swerving down an expressway with a chow mein in their lap that they're trying to eat with chopsticks, steering with their knees...

[Isolder74]

Its been shown that the distraction of the phone call even when hands free still has a factor on a person's driving. The factor with the hands free is less but it is still there.

Now texting and driving even if its one handed I do not see how that can be safe in any small ammount. First you have to look at the screen when you receive a message to read it. Second it requires that you, even with keys memorized, make total use of one hand to send the message. Third how can you be driving safely when most of your attention is on the phone most of the time,

[salm]

What's wrong with showing respect for your own life - and more important, the lives of those around you - by not distracting yourself with either an in-hand phone, or a hands-free phone?

There´s really nothing wrong with it. The point is that the job requires me to speak on the phone sometimes while driving.
I also can´t stop for a call sometimes because it would take too much time and furthermore is illegal and highly dangerous on the Autobahn.

What i´m saying is that both options are distracting but one of them is more distracting. The problem is that using an in-hand phone is illegal so i have to use the option that is more dangerous (or at least seems more dangerous to me.)

[Kanastrous]

It would be interesting to see an economist with the right data and background, assess whether or not the economic gains made by doing more business by cell-while-driving, offset the losses in life and property caused by cell users when they fuck up.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd suggest that using a headset would be less distracting than a hands free speaker device, because the human impulse to look at who you are talking to would be mitigated by the little airplane style microphone you're talking to being right in front of your face in the direction of the windshield, whereas the "hands free device", at least if I was using one (this is why I rarely even take a cellphone with me when traveling, let alone use it) I'd continuously be impulsively glancing toward the phone setup in the middle of the dashboard.

[Kanastrous]

There's also been testimony that a telephone conversation is fundamentally unlike a face-to-face conversation, because you can't pick up any visual cues off your interlocutor, and have to focus more on processing the conversation mentally, as a result.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I read that in a study someone linked to, from SDnet.

[Kanastrous]

There's also been testimony that a telephone conversation is fundamentally unlike a face-to-face conversation, because you can't pick up any visual cues off your interlocutor, and have to focus more on processing the conversation mentally, as a result. So hands-free vs hand-held misses the point; the problem is any kind of telephony-while-driving, at all.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I read that in a study someone linked to, from SDnet.