They should just ban automobiles.
Cars kill 30,000 to 40,000 people every year in the US.
Texting, not talking, is the problem.
If only the EPA, et al...
They can ban it all they want, but unless the cops actually pull people over and ticket them, they will keep doing it. Its illegal in our state already but I still see people on cell phones while driving, all the time! So, what good is the ban?
More land of the used-to-be free news.
The sanction should be on ‘distracted driving’, not on a specific distraction. Do we want to be cited for even listening to a podcast via earbuds? I don’t think so.
Do they intend to ban Hands Free cell phone use to? If all cell phone communication is banned, what about CB radios?
If I’ve got a cell phone up against my ear, they can see it, but if I’m talking hands free, or texting with the phone below eye sight, how will they tell? Will there be some kind of detection device to let them know a cell phone is in use?
ignoring the political/philisophical prism many see this through, it is my direct and constant experience on US interstates that the majority of odd or erratic driving is by people who, when I pass them, either have a phone on their ear or are looking at something in their lap/hand.
The number of people who believe they drive well talking on a cell is much higher than the number that actually can allocate proper attention and response-time.
Bizarre law, I know, but the fact is what he was doing was already illegal.
So how would another law change anything?
Now, let's think about that for a second. It is inarguable that in 1997, car phones (as we used to call them), while not rare, certainly were not around in the numbers we see today (even though we simply call them cell phones now). So let's agree that cell phone use (while driving) has increased as cell phones have become nearly ubiquitous among drivers. While not in the hands of every driver, we can be utterly certain there are exponentially more cell phones now than 15 years ago.
Since there are more cell phones in driver's hands, and they're so amazingly dangerous, why haven't accidents gone up? And this is using the RAW accident totals, not driver-mile rates. The 5.5 million accidents in 2009 would represent a much greater reduction when accounting for the increased number of drivers and miles driven.
So again, I ask, if cell phones are so elementarily causing accidents, why haven't there been more accidents as these devices have become common-place in the driver's hands?
The answer is simple. They really don't cause more accidents.
Click CRASHES link in search categories.
In ground school, they teach you “never drop the airplane to fly the radio”. No cell phone call in the world is so important that it should interfere with a driver’s attention to the road, but with that in mind (and assuming the driver stays heads up), I have no problem with use of a handsfree device while on a voice call. Texting is another matter and should be banned because it diverts the driver’s sight from the road to the texting device.
DRIVING CELL PHONE USERS RECOMMEND BAN ON NTSB!
Screw the NTSB. They cannot legislate according to the Constitution and this is an issue that should be up to the individual states.
That way, the more Commie-type states will ban it and the free ones (like mine) will not.
I been in two accidents involving some jackass on a cell phone, one of them near fatal.
Studies suggest that cell phone use impares a persons ability to drive to the same extent as driving under the influence.
Yet I HATE to see more laws on the books.
Just make it legal to beat the crap out of someone if they hit you due to cell use.
It is getting difficult to tell the difference between a cell phone user and a drunk/impaired driver. Poor lane discipline, erratic speed control, tailgating, unawareness of surroundings, all pretty much the same.
I’m sure everyone in this forum will insist they’re not affected by the distraction. I’ll just keep dodging them and let the voice mail catch the call . . .
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”- Groucho Marx