Here in Tennessee, driver's training is OPTIONAL. All you have to do is pass a simple road test to get your license. How f*cked up is that? How about we educate our drivers before we punish everyone?

What’s next? Banning people from talking to you or you talking to them in the car. It’s the same concept as talking on the phone

Sorry, Dex...

Research is against you on this issue.

http://unews.utah.edu/p/?r=112608-2

Winterboarder, you're just an idiot. "The government should stay out of our lives, their only job is to protect us against foreign invaders." What happens when the threat is domestic? Like idiots who put others lives at risk by talking on the phone while driving? Or there's a a problem with food like spinach had last year?

Anyway I would love a ban on all cellphone use while driving. First, picking up to say I'll call you back is moronic, how about you just don't pick up? Voicemail management is dead easy on iPhones. Plus I'm tired of people cutting me off because they didn't know they were in the wrong lane because they were too busy talking.

Driving is a CONSCIOUS effort. Be smart before you f*cking kill somebody.

Law, or no law, it will be many, many years before people stop this behavior... unless technological steps are taken to make it impossible.

Kidding. I actually did give up driving, but it was for health and environmental reasons.

It may have something to do with a passenger changing how they talk when the driving is more challenging, or with how we tend to zone out when talking to a disembodied voice.

Either way, it should be illegal. If you get in an accident, they should subpoena your phone records to see if you were talking on the phone or texting prior to the accident.

@winterboarder: your understanding of government is great. If you don't want the government to regulate use of vehicles on public roads, I assume you're only using roads paid for by private parties..which would pretty much limit you to your driveway.

However, see my post above which debunks the idea that hands-free offers any safety advantage over holding the phone to your ear. The idea that having only one hand on the wheel is the problem has been firmly discredited with research findings.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-cells30-2008jun30,0,3192911.story

As people continue to get killed and maimed in car accidents that result from distracted drivers exercising their "right" to provide only partial attention to the task of operating a motor vehicle, more research will be done that continues pressing these scientific realities of attention and concentration into the public eye. The voices of the ignorant and naive among us that believe they can do two things at once and give complete attention to both will fall by the way side in a manner similar to those who once argued the earth is flat.

You have 100% of your mental concentration and attention which can be used at any given moment. Any task beyond 1 will divide your attention with each task getting a portion of that 100%... in no case can you give 100% attention to something and any attention whatsoever to another task simultaneously. In this situation, it's essentially a simple case of mathematics.

As already mentioned, if you want to kill yourself, that's one thing. But you are endangering everyone else around you, particularly the pedestrians.

I would support a ban on using the phone without a hands free kit. I've done it and I'm not proud. I've sent texts when I felt I could, also still very bad. But I'd like it so that I don't see every other person texting while I drive around the DC beltway at 70mph.

I personally think driving with one hand on something else is essentially a subset of reckless driving. That's anything, a phone, coffee, makeup, sandwich, and all the other things you've heard in stories.

With a handsfree, it's like talking to someone next to you. And if someone is next to you talking to you for an hour, why isn't that regulated? It's should not be.

Talking with handsfree should be compared to talking with someone next to you, and they should study if one is more dangerous than another. Also realize that having someone with you can keep you awake and focused on long drives, just as someone on a handsfree. That's not to say you hook up your handsfree and talk to someone for an entire 12 hour drive, but they can help as well as hurt.

In truth, the real way to solve problems like this is to invest in public transportation, and not continue to band aid the fact that driving is the most dangerous form of travel there is.

http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/xap144-drews.pdf

Who the hell are you riding in your car? Do you think kids are going to pay attention to the road when you're not? Hell, my friends don't even do it! They're too busy looking out of the side windows or looking at their own phones!

Point being don't let misconceptions about hands-free cellphone use make you feel safer with Bluetooth drivers on the road.

To put it shortly, if I see you texting or talking on the phone on the ride, I'll give you a piece of my mind. Even if I'm not on a bike/in car. Don't be idiots.