Not a bad idea.

They should. It would have saved that gal's life when she crossed the railroad tracks in Ramsey.

So many people get killed by drivers who are talking that the NTSB just recommened that states ban ALL cellphone use by drivers.

Handsfree or not, the evidence keeps piling up that cellphones and cars just don't mix.

Walking is also dangerous, in cities especially. People walk right into things. Hadn't you noticed?

Too bad Corzine survived, the folks at MF Global would still have their money.

Its not a knee jerk reaction.. its simply that now, with decades of cell phone use, we know much more about the situation now and we can see that beyond any doubt its very dangerous.

And your suggestion of requiring cars to drive themselves is not far off, at some point not far in the future, autonomous navigation capabilities will be required to drive into large cities or on major highways, barring a big fall in traffic due to automation making many jobs unnecessary (also not at all unlikely) that will happen. Fairly soon. (my guess, around 10 years from now) Obviously, the car companies will love it because everyone will have to buy new cars or take the bus.

you'd better run in Hoboken then xtreme. I believe in Spokane, WA they have outlawed use of iPhone when crossing street and NYC is thinking about that too currently and will present to their council shortly.

I actually do run in Hoboken with music on and look both ways before crossing any intersection. I'm sorry but the legislation doesn't make sense. You can't fix stupid. If someone runs out into the street without looking no amount of legislation is going to stop that. At some point when are we going to say enough is enough? Where has personal responsibility gone?

I'm not saying that these are not dangers we face but at some point we have to be willing to take responsibility for our own safety and not rely on government intervention. For the record, I agree that holding a phone talking or textng while driving need to be banned.

Hoboken is not as fast paced as NYC is, so I can understand when someone is trying to get to a meeting and blabbing on phone at 44 and Madison at 830am. People in NYC especially think that drivers will stop for them and if you assume wrong you're dead. I've done it myself, i'll text and cross street and not look, caught myself once doing it. I'm with stupid sadly. Yes driving and texting is so crazy. NeWay xtreme ttyl k?

I'm with you on this one. Anyone who talks or texts while driving on Route 17 in Paramus for example is just an accident waiting to happen with all the constant driveway entrances and exits on a highway that many consider their 'expressway;.

Me too! Every day, I see moms in enormous SUVs driving at high speed with one-hand holding a cell phone. It's scary. If you're gonna spend $60k on a car, spring for the Bluetooth. Please.

Jessica, this is not correct. A hands-free device is just as dangerous as a regular phone. The danger is in the distraction, not the device itself.

Speaking to someone using a bluetooth device is no more distracting than talking to a passenger.

RedRider765, this is simply a false statement. You don't have to believe me, but there is a HUGE difference, and it's been confirmed many times.

Nick are you a scientist? How do you know? Links?

Rory, see below, and then eat crow! :-)

There was a study where "Speaking to someone using a bluetooth device is no more distracting than talking to a passenger", but they found the big difference is that when you are talking to someone in the car, you have more than 1 set of eyes to see possible problems (most of the time)

I agree, in part with your viewpoint. The only problem is is that they are more likely going to make someone else pay the cost of their stupidity.

If a cellphone talking driver is too busy looking at their phone to see that they are going to run over a pedestrian, the driver might feel real guilty, but the victim might be dead.

Laws like these and the ones named after the victims of some tragic event are mostly there to make us feel better, they don't change the way anyone acts. They do have one upside, when the cellphone yakking driver is being procecuted for mowing down a pedestrian it might be easier to get a conviction because they were violating a law against talking on the cellphone.

Yes, the distraction is unsafe.

"How is talking on a hands free set, any different than children screaming in the car as a distraction"

For a lot of reasons. Because the conversation with a passenger is in the here and now, and a phone conversation isn't. Again, you don't have to believe me, you can keep going with intuition, but the science is indisputable.

If your children are screaming and making it a distraction then somewhere along the line in their upbringing, discipline and parental rules were not properly taught.

Sigh, if I must, Journey, I must. This took me all of 2 seconds to find.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19433208

"Our review shows that talking on the phone, regardless of phone type, has negative impacts on performance especially in detecting and identifying events. Performance while using a hands-free phone was rarely found to be better than when using a handheld phone. Some studies found that drivers compensate for the deleterious effects of cell phone use when using a handheld phone but neglect to do so when using a hands-free phone."

I bet Nick is the guy at a green light holding up traffic while he sends a "lap" email.

That one showed that hands-free are less dangerous than handsets.

It took me another 2 seconds to find this one, which shows how speaking to a passenger is categorically different from speaking on the phone.

http://www.psych.utah.edu/lab/appliedcognition/publications/passenger.pdf

"The results indicate that passenger conversations differ from cell phone
conversations because the surrounding traffic not only becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, but the driving condition also has a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, thereby mitigating the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving."

Nick Muson,

sigh sigh sigh,

I could have googled and found other references. I wanted to know what exact one you were using, so that I could be fair to you.

I'm totally with Nick on this one. Go to PubMed and while you're there look at some of the "related papers" links, I think you'll find the evidence overwhelmingly supports a conclusion that any telephone use - or headphones for that matter, is distracting enough to call its usefulness into question - and bring up a big question.. should this be legal?

When I was in my 20s I was walking through a pedestrian mall in Santa Monica, CA, and a nine or ten year old girl wearing a Sony Walkman rode her bicycle through a plate glass window right in front of me, cutting her face, ams and legs. I was holding my hand over a huge wound that was spurting blood while the ambulance came. I dont think she died. (if she had I am sure I would have remembered that)

Ever since then, I am very careful about anything like that. I dont listen to music when I'm doing anything that requires attention.

When I am walking and I get a cell phone call. I stop, find some off the beaten track place and cover my other ear with my hand.

Journey, he did.
Or try this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
Then enter
"hands-free" cellular
into the search window..

I know xtreme, that's why I put the smiley in (the now also deleted) post.

There is a great book about the gigantic gap between perceived and actual risk while driving. It's not a dry technical report at all, really fascinating stuff:
"Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)" by Tom Vanderbilt

Billy, I am not acquainted with the details of the law at all -- I was responding to the many voices who thought hands-free is safer than a handset.

My guess is that the law will be similar to the seatbelt law -- the police aren't exactly going to go out of their way to pull you over, but they might. Most likely it will mean that when you plow into a pedestrian you'll be found super-extra-fantastically libel for everything, if they can prove you were in contract negotiations at 60 mph.

And FYI -- your driving habits sound dangerous.

Hands Free is safer than a headset, you have both hands on the wheel.

So Billy, you see the evidence but reject it outright?

an interesting one.. Plug the PMID at the bottom in to seeit
Ergonomics. 2010 May;53(5):602-16.
Phoning while driving II: a review of driving conditions influence.
Collet C, Guillot A, Petit C.
The first paper examined how the variables related to driving performance were impacted by the management of holding a phone conversation. However, the conditions under which this dual task is carried out are dependent upon a set of factors that may particularly influence the risk of crash. These conditions are defined by several independent variables, classified into five main categories: i) legislation; ii) phone type (hands-free or hand-held); iii) drivers' features regarding age, gender, personal individual profile and driving experience; iv) conversation content (casual or professional) and its context (held with passengers or with a cell (mobile) phone); v) driving conditions (actual or simulated driving, road type, traffic density and weather). These independent variables determine the general conditions. The way in which these factors are combined and interact one with another thus determines the risk that drivers undergo when a cell phone is used while driving. Finally, this review defined the general conditions of driving for which managing a phone conversation is likely to elicit a high risk of car crash or, conversely, may provide a situation of lower risk, with sufficient acceptance to ensure safety.

PMID:
20432083
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Yours is an interesting perspective, not too far from my own. What is driving? It is both going down a 100 mile intersection-less highway on a nice sunny afternoon in the Arizona desert and parallel parking in the rain on 6th Avenue in rush hour Manhattan. So it could be easy enough to argue either side of this case, based on the "driving context". Here's the reality: there are those of us with the common sense to drive responsibly and occasionally use a cell phone, and others of us who will abuse the privilege. I think surreptitious use of cell phones will continue, legal or not, but should be illegal with stiff penalties. Otherwise, a grey area will continue as "the interpretation of the summon-zing officer". Some people are devil-may-care enough to talk on the phone recklessly, others are not. 3000 people are estimated to die annually in the US from distracted driving. That should be the end of it, but of course won't be. And each of us I guess has a legal right to decide "how immediately important the phone call or texting is".

Look at it this way, the more we allow cellphone use while driving NOW, the SOONER that day will come when they won't let PEOPLE drive cars, especially in urban areas. They will require that machines do it. That would right there double the capacity of our aging highways. Because automated cars can maintain a regular following distance, they dont speed up or slow down, and that moves things along much faster. If automation wasn't already cutting the numbers of commuters rapidly, I would say that day was inevitable, but its possible that employment may fall so fast that traffic becomes a non-issue soon. Its hard to say.

The technology for autonomous driving just keeps getting better and better, and Detroit would love it because everyone who wants to go into the city or drive around in one then has to buy a new car. Plus, the advertisers would like it because people would spend that time surfing the net or listening to the radio, or something like that - reading ads. Thats why Google is so involved. They see that additional hour as money in their pocket.

If you don't think they "would" do that, look at what happened when they sold off the low frequency TV channels, and now soon with GPS and LightSquared.

Money rules.. if you don't have money, your needs don't mean squat, and the rights to you have already been sold.

Cellphone use while driving kills. We have to alter our habits, deal with it.

Also the highway signs here in NJ are very, very badly done. The people who design highway interchanges here need to take some courses in user interface design. has anybody here ever found themselves completely sent in the wrong directions by following really confusing signs. But NY state, right next door, is much, much better.

To our credit, its a bit better now than it was a few years ago. But we still have a long way to go to meet the standards of legibility, consistency and usability that every other urban area in the world, even in supposed Third world countries, adhere to on highways.

Newark Airport is the worst. I have had so many friends get lost - or "trapped" (as one put it) there.

Being killed is far different than having an accident.

These days, depending on somebody's insurance, they often would rather pull the plug than take care of them until they get better.
HMO medicine is criminal. Whats the point of them, as we waste 50% or more of every healthcare dollar feeding them. And when people get sick, they dump them anyway. If we got rid of the HMOs, we could give everyone in the entire nation topnotch healthcare for free with what we spend now.

Managed care organizations are the REAL "death panels".

Passengers absolutely can be a distraction and should know better and should not divert the driver's attention.

Studies show that (adult) passengers stop talking if something happens that requires the drivers attention.

That makes all the difference.

You're absolutely right. Studies also show that no amount of practice or training makes cellphone use safe.. it applies to police officers and other professionals just as much as others.

Also, the older you get the harder it gets to multitask. Ironically, young people are the best at it.

You may be distracted when talking on a bluetooth but not everyone is so weak minded. Seriously folks, kids, egg mcmuffins, your cup of coffee, your morning cigarette, changing CDs, futzing w/ the radio & doing your damn makeup are all far more distracting. How about you ban all that from cars first.

@Redrider765 -- I've noticed that a) you're completely wrong, and b) you're making the same tired point that a dozen people have made. Have you noticed that too?

You're not at good at driving as you think you are, I GUARANTEE IT.

My insurance company would disagree with your assessment.

Great comeback

I've never seen anyone texting while driving but if I did, I would definitely phone it in along with their license plate number and location.
That or an obviously drunk driver.

And I am not a person who does things like that normally.

Many phones and some cars allow for voice dialing. Problem solved.

Yeah, duh, some dumb lib did it! Stoopit liberals hate our freedoms and whatnot!

Fer cryin' out loud. This is the problem with our pathetic country.

Human: "Here are the facts"
American Mouth Breather: "I don't care fer yer high falutin' facts -- my gut tells me what's safe and that's good enuff fer me"

I'm sorry about your sister, I'm ok with banning texting, I can live with out that, but bluetooth should be allowed. You won't need earpieces anymore because a lot of new cars have bluetooth built in, so you can just talk as if you are talking with a passenger.

driving while driving is a distraction

Tyler, this is from the beginning of that study:
"Richard Young, Ph.D., ..., examined possible bias in a 1997 Canadian study and a 2005 Australian study"

He found that those 2 studies overestimated the risk of cellphone-related accidents. I didn't cite those 2 studies, so what's your point? They guy didn't prove anything, just that those 2 used a flawed methodology.

You should be more careful with your "gotcha" links -- someone might actually read them

And stupidity is the #1 cause of all accidents.

Is that a funny, or do you actually believe that?

Clearly you don't drive enough Nick b/c there isn't a day that goes by that I don't encounter someone doing something incredibly stupid and I think to myself, "what a frigging moron". People going just below the speed limit on the NJT in the left lane would be near the top of that list. BTW, anyone ever notice that those drivers almost all either are old people in big caddies or younger yuppies driving a Prius?

Ah, I forgot you were posting as a not-so-fresh stand-up comedian, not as a person with an informed point of view. Carry on!

Nick - I just have 0 tolerance for people who want to micromanage my life. Stupidity can't be legislated away and there are too many stupid people out there.

Whatever, dude. And I have 0 tolerance for selfish NJ drivers who think driving is a god-given right and everyone's a crappy driver but themselves. I don't want to be killed because you think you're special.

I want to sue your ass off and/or send you to jail if you hit my car and I can prove you were on your phone. It's a reasonable request, and your freedoms will survive it.

Driving on a public highway is, in fact, a "common right", protected by the Constitution. Driving licenses are an unconstitutional burden rammed down our throats by the state government at gunpoint. Unfortunately, that's what government does when the people forget where the torches and the pitchforks are.

Is there a point in there, somewhere, Max? Sounds like Libertarian pie-in-the-sky gobbledygook to me, as in interesting but completely divorced from reality.

I think freedom is a God given right. Driving is a responsibility and I drive responsibly. Dude, that is why when I bought a car, I made sure it had installed a hands free integrated bluetooth system where I could control everything w/ 1 touch of a button in the line of sight w/ the windshield and my voice.

And dude, I am tired of do-gooders like you trying to micromanage everything and tell people how to wipe their asses. Stay out of our lives and let us take care of ourselves. This driver who hasn't had an accident or ticket in close to 20 years is perfectly capable of taking care of himself and making sure he safely operates a vehicle. I don't need you telling me how to drive. I don't need you to tell me how to do anything. Personally I think you are just projecting your complete inability to drive in this forum and assuming everyone here is just as incompetent as you behind the wheel. Sorry dude, but some of us know how to drive and we've been doing it safely for decades.

Whoops! Sorry Max -- I didn't realize you were here as a "funny guy with quips" when I responded to you.

"Personally I think you are just projecting your complete inability to drive in this forum "

LMAO! Well you're a real Dr. Freud, aren't you? Funny stuff.

Redrider, you forgot to mention the ones that don't use turn signals lol.

And while we're at that, let's also delegalize men. They have their "junk", and thus have the potential to rape someone. In fact, I saw a study that some of them did just that! Throw them all to jail!

By ban you mean take away driver licenses. Well yes, if they no longer have the reaction time and ability to control the vehicle in a safe manner, then yes they should be banned from the roads. But don't use that as your argument that too many restrictions will lead to many others.

Ricky, I wouldn't have as much a problem with cell phones if cars weren't driving so fast within towns. The speed limits on roads with cross streets are way too high in the US, we should look at the speed limits in other countries to see much more realistic speed limits for inside communities. (They are lots lower than they are here, except on highways, where they are often higher)

The speed cars drive at are too fast for them to react to things.

Jobs are continuing to vanish and people need to cut expenses. They can't afford cars. If speed limits were lower, that wouldn't be such a problem and more people would use bikes, like in the EU. Many Americans are terrified of walking or biking places because of insanely irresponsible, reckless drivers who view their behavior as somehow blessed by God. Thats killing millions of us. People would be healthier.

Are you saying the studies I posted are illegitimate, or not? Are you saying there's no real science, or not? Take a stand, don't be so wishy-washy!

And what's your point, anyway? We should just reject all studies because some of them are contradictory? That seems to me to be incredibly lazy. My suggestion is that instead you reject the sound bite and actually read something, actually get informed, before declaring yourselves experts on human nature.

Next time I see "Nick Muson left 27 comments on: Name an article", I might have to think twice about participating!

lol. That's probably good advice, Tom, especially in your case.

Nick, he doesn't understand the scientific process, and he either refuses to look at PubMed to get the full picture, or he doesn't understand how to put in search terms and look at a breadth of studies. He also probably doesn't understand that PubMed is an international database, with millions, literally, of contributors, on every possible health related subject, or that science in other countries is not as politicized as it is here, and not as subject to corporate control.

In other words, money doesn't buy an outcome quite like it does here.

I think many US "true believers" are so very desperate to see reinforcement for their world view, to justify all the emotional capital that they have invested in it, that they will grasp at rationales really, almost anything they can. The disinformation sources know that and try to supply them with the threads they need. However, the disinformation sorces make several assumptions. The biggest one is that most conservative Americans have spent very little time outside of the US, and if they had, they have had limited contact with other cultures, also they don't understand the scientific process or the concept of peer review..They also are accustomed to getting their ways.. But they don't understand how to argue a point at all..or how to fact check one either..The propagandists, of the past and present, pursue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milieu_control
In other words, they attempt to control and manipulate the availability of information just as cults do. They understand their desperate need to resolve their Cognitive Dissonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
and the tendency towards Groupthink
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Clearly you don't have a car w/ integrated bluetooth. My phone can be in the trunk and it works perfectly fine.

You have to interact with devices in your car all the time. The radio, turn signals, lights, windshield wipers. Pushing an on button is is pushing an on button.

Yeah, even if I don't use my phone, I'm gonna be using the climate controls, using the navigation system, all things that are more distracting that pushing a button on my steering wheel to answer a call.

."""Hands free devices are the same as talking to a passenger in the car. They are both distractions.""" There ya go. And both distractions are unsafe.

Oh, so I can't talk to my passengers now Ricky?

Driving requires 100 percent concentration of everyone around you, not on whether Aunt Jane has decided to fly in for the holidays and what arrangements need to be done for guests at the dinner. You have to keep scanning the roads and thinking ahead to possible actions you need to take if someone stops abruptly without warning as one example. Stop being selfish toward everyone around you. Your time and schedule is not as important to others as you think it is. Pull over to make a distracting conversation to keep others around you safer out there.

Ricky, I don't think you understand. No one gives a crap about how important our stuff is to you, its important to us and I'm not gonna pull over so you can feel safe.

Billy Mays, its not so someone can FEEL safe, its so they can BE safe, because anybody who talks on the phone while driving is SEVERAL TIMES MORE LIKELY to overlook something important until its too late and they KILL somebody.
Or themselves.

Just because YOU yourself have never been killed or injured while talking does not mean its impossible or even unlikely, it just means it has not happened YET.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability

Mays, your response is typical of asking anyone with an addiction to stop doing it. It gets nasty just like if we confront others about their smoking addiction. But we don't since smoking doesn't put the rest of us in jeopardy. But lack of concentration by the drivers behind us does put us in jeopardy. It puts many others in more danger including pedestrians.

"""just the idiot drivers who can't drive regardless of being on a phone"""" typical, it's not me that's the problem, it's the others who can't drive even when not on the phone, it's always the other guys

Xreme,

I'm guessing you didn't look at the studies on PubMed. We're not talking about one study, there are hundreds of studies on PubMed, from all around the world, everywhere they use cellphones, and drive cars, which is pretty much everywhere, and they all explore different aspects of the issues. And they are fairly consistent. If one study had a result that was inconsistent, then it should be looked at, because the study design is probably faulty. Remember when advertising tobacco was legal and cigarette ads were everywhere? Well, back then a certain PR firm, cut their teeth on fighting the growing body of evidence on cigarettes with their own fake disinformation, and they got really good at it. Then they branched out into disinformation of all kinds, especially fighting science on things like toxic chemicals, and making ot easy for corporations to get away with murder. Now they are a major player in all sorts of things, they create fake grassroots groups for companies, hundreds of them, and they have armies of paid bloggers. They are heavily involved in healtcare, and also in political campaigns. They have a particular style of creating noise around issues. Its easy to recognize. They try to make intelligent conversations impossible.

jessica -- if you are hit by someone who is negotiating a contract on a bluetooth while driving, wouldn't you want that person to be culpable? Or you'd just shrug it off as the cost of a free society?

That person would be just as cuplable as someone who is just stupid and can't drive like you. Duh!

Stuff like that happens all the time. Carnage on the roads and a great deal of it is a result of people not paying attention to what's around them.

Its open season especially on pedestrians and bicyclists.

They will probably claim they didn't see her and nobody will be the wiser.
No charges filed.
Some body work on the SUV.

heh-heh, you said 'boobs', heh-heh

LOL. More psycho-analysis -- it's my lucky day!

Is that the ONLY word you ever notice?

Yeah, it makes it really hard to concentrate on the road... (ba-dum-bum)

Okay, Nick, you made your point. I see now why you object to cell phones. That's because your other hand is also busy, right?

No Max, because like you said I have too little in the male member dept to do that without a well-equipped lab.

You're a troll. You grow tiresome.

Yeah, yeah. You obviously love micromanaging. We just learned where the habit comes from.

Funny you should say that, friendly fire, because Google WILL lead us out of this mess with the Google Car:
http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/10/20/google-unveils-driverless-car-tech/

Which sister?

Agree, stop being lazy, selfish and inconsiderate toward all others on the road. Pull over. Your time isn't as valuable as you think it is. And your schedule isn't as important to others as you think it is.

You write in an articulate way but when all is said and done, it's a safety issue and not an issue of telling others what to do. If I tell you to not climb a ladder and go on your roof to remove snow, I don't do that because I enjoy telling you what to do. It's done for common sense safety reasons.

"Additionally, very often, statistics merely sum up that which the statistician seeks to exhibit as fact. The implication being that the data collected to support a bill calling for an overall cellphone ban may be 'tainted'."

George, this statement may be true in the general sense, but to criticize a specific study then you need to have a specific criticism. Otherwise you're simply saying "all studies are equally biased and can be equally ignored", which is irresponsible.

George, how old are you?

The #1 factor making it predictably harder to multitask is aging. Someone who multitasks well at 30, might become noticably bad at 45 and very bad at it at 60.

Generally, it has to do with brain health. Lots of practice at something and antioxidants may slow it measurably, but nomatter what someone does, the distraction while driving with a cellphone thing is effected more by age (and age and stress) than anything else. (The combination of age plus stress, even just lots of noise, will damage your brain irreparably very fast.)

Maybe its decreases in hippocampal volume or telomere length or advanced glycation end products (loss of vascular elasticity) doing it. Google that.

Actually, reading back through what I read before, what I said about practice doesn't seem to apply. No matter how much you do it, the aging brain loses its ability to multitask in the specific way needed to talk on the phone and drive at the same time. What that means is that a policeman is just as likely as a degenerate to have attentional issues when speaking on a cellphone in a car. No amount of practice can counter the effects of aging on the hippocampus and amygdala.

Also, from previous reading Ive done on the subject, I can tell you that an episode of heavy duty emotional stress permanently shrinks the hippocampus and amygdala irreversibly. Thats why people coming back from wars, or going through extremely stressful periods of other kinds, have so many problems. Stress causes brain damage.

Certain kinds of surgery do too. Triple bypass heart surgery. Neither Clinton or Cheney was the same person mentally after their open heart surgery.

Alcoholism does the same thing. Remember Bush II's word finding difficulties? That was the legacy of his many years at Yale and afterwards.

George, its not the cars, its the drivers we are talking about here. Certainly we'll soon have cars that can drive themselves. We already do. Would you have everybody be required to dump their durrent car and buy one? Because thats what would happen, just like the digital TV changeover.

How did that work out? Try disconnecting your cable, stick a piece of wire in the F-connector, and find out!

Then report back to the group. Do it!

Thats exactly what will happen, and it wont even require anything more than an automatically pushed firmware upgrade. Most existing phones have the capability already. If they are moving fast, they won't work. They will get a special tone. Incoming calls will go to voicemail. The phone will probably be able to tell the owner they have received a call via a distinctive ring and then they will need to stop and pull over, then wait a few seconds for that fact to be registered, to receive it.

Yeah and I'll go to my mechanic and have the device removed.

That was tongue in cheek.

Its true, kids cause the same kinds of problems, because they don't have the brains to realize that when Mommy or Daddy is driving 60 MPH, they need to stop trying to get her/his attention.

Exactly.

So they will have to make it automatic.

Listen, if I wanted to just sit there and drive, I'd buy a Corolla, however I don't. I want a luxury car that has features like Bluetooth, climate control, a Nav system, heated and cooled seats, and a moonroof. These features all require pressing buttons. I'm not gonna pull over to switch the radio station or open the moonroof just to make you feel safe. Maybe you should move to Idaho or West Virginia, seems like the people there are more your type if you can't handle driving in NJ.

Billy, you are clearly a very important person with very important needs. My guess is you're on of those John Galt types, forever being hounded by your inferiors, forced to share your office, I mean the road, with the rest of us idiots. How weary it must make you!

Well, you've persuaded me. You have every right to do whatever you can afford to you, because you're special, and we as a society would be lost, lost I say!, without people like you!

Actually, I never claimed that the road is my office, but my car is my office when I'm on the go and I'll use it as such. You probably would be lost or at least homeless without people like me, you know those Wall Street executives that you love to hate, and I say that as a liberal. I think in your mind, everyone should be driving a Ford Model T, since it doesn't have any distractions in it.

"I never claimed that the road is my office, but my car is my office when I'm on the go"

Sure sounds like you're claiming the road is your office to me, Mr. Galt. I bow before your superior life.

There's a big difference between pushing a button to open your sunroof, or adjust the climate, and conducting business while you're driving 70 MPH on Rte 80 with hundreds of other cars. If you're using your car as an office while on the highway, then you're a menace to the rest of us and should have your license revoked immediately.

Last time I checked, my car doesn't take up the whole road. I'm sorry (not really) that you feel offended that I use my car as an office, but thats my right, and I intend to exercise that right. I'm surprised you even got on the computer, must have taken you 2 hours to figure out how to type in the password, since it seems like you hate technology, regardless of how advanced it is. Maybe they should ban radios in cars, and all buttons too, since they are all distractions?

Hookerman, by conducting business, I mean talking on the phone, using Bluetooth.

I hate to pull rank on you Billy Mays, but I am a software developer at an equities options market making firm on Wall St, and I am awesome at it.

What's your next high-school insult? I'm ugly and my mother dresses me funny? Well Billy, I'm rubber and you're glue, so there!

Admit it -- you just don't give a hoot. You're gonna do what you're gonna do, because you have a very high opinion of yourself and an inflated sense of what your rights are. Your argument can be summed up as "F YOU", and there's nothing else to it.

Billy Mays, are you telling us that because you bought a car that has this and that, that you have a RIGHT to endanger others?

No, I'm saying that I intend to use the features that my car has and as Nick requested me to say, I don't care if you don't approve. Just for the record, I've been in one car accident, which wasn't my fault, I was rear ended at a stop sign, and had absolutely not speeding tickets in my 15 years of driving.

Billy, doesn't the thought that your chances of getting in an accident increases dramatically while you're talking faze you?

Suppose your boss or a client brings up some emotionally charged issue and you lose your concentration for a moment and end up missing a red light, and a tragedy results.

Would you be honest about the fact you had been talking on the phone, or would you hide it?
How would you feel? Regretful?

These people who can't afford a hotel room feel its their right to use the public highways as their offices. Why can't a computer handle that stuff for them?

Look people, whatever business you are in, its easy to set up a web page and a database to handle 95% of it. Your customers can do whatever, say, order their stuff there themselves. Or do just about anything else. 24/7.

95% of the time, they don't need to speak to you. That other 5%, its simple to set up a system to have them enter in everything they can, and then insert that additional information that makes it an "exception", in an SMS message and send it to you. Then, if its an important situation, you can pull off the road and phone them. It will all be packaged up and ready for your executive decision-making.

Win win situation, everybody is happy.

Billy, the fact that your car has Bluetooth does not mean that the expectation is that you'd be conducting business while rolling along at 70 mph. That's as ignorant as the people who use their microwave oven to dry their cat, and then blame the manufacturer when the cat explodes.

So I can use the Nav, play with the climate controls and all those other buttons, but not talk on my cell phone when my eyes are on the road and hands on the steering whell?

Don, I can afford a hotel room, but I have to get places, OK? I'm not gonna stop at a hotel room to make you feel safe. I've been using Bluetooth for 7 years, and haven't had one accident or ticket.

Yeah that annoys the hell out of me, it took me 5 minutes to set up Bluetooth.

Except that people using hands free setups still have lots of accidents because they are almost as distracted. Hence the NTSB's recommendation that all cellphone use be banned in cars. If people were using cellphones responsibly, this issue would not have come up, but all over the world, elevated levels of accidents seem connected to cellphone use. With the cost of intensive care reaching six figures a day in the US, many people are losing their homes to the banks and lawyers, and their children their educations and futures, because they were walking down a street one day and some idiot decided to run into them while talking on their cellphone. They were killed, The driver claimed ignorance. Another preventable tragedy.

There needs to be responsibility.

Its either that or make cars that drive themselves. Then you can talk on the cellphone, surf the net, even catch a nap, but you'll need a new car.

Its your choice people, which will it be, small inconvenience or $50,000 new car mandatory?

I agree but that's what happens when you attempt to interfere and end a person's addiction. In this case, the addiction to a tech gadget.

If you would like to read a interesting book about how parents view danger, I would be happy to lend my kindle copy of "Beware Dangerism!" (Kindle Single) (TED Books).

I will not lend my kindle but you can read it on your Droid/iPhone or computer.