Banning even talking on a cell phone seems absurd to me, what would be the next step? Banning talking to the other passengers in your car? How about not allowing small children in a vehicle, from my experience they can be pretty damn distracting (and annoying).

I understand the no texting or not using a hands free phone when talking in your car, but this idea seems silly.

Agreed. I can see no distinction between using a hands free device to talk on a cell phone and talking to a passenger.

I think this is largely feel-good legislation that seeks to give the impression that they are doing something about a problem that they really can't fix. We already have laws in place outlawing reckless driving, so if you rear-end someone else while texting, you were already breaking the law. You can't outlaw every conceivable way that a driver could allow themselves to become inattentive to driving. Eating, drinking, spilling, putting your Houdini kid back into the seatbelt, changing the radio station or CD, applying make-up, shaving, changing your clothes, reading.... the list of stupid stuff people do while driving is endless, and I suspect I'm not the only one who had engaged in a couple of them... I've just been lucky. So the trick, as I see it, is to teach people that you really *do* need to just pay attention to driving and not crap around. Excess laws aren't going to help.

Wrong. A passenger shuts up immediately when you touch the brakes or do anything out of the expected. The cell phone gabber just keeps chatting along oblivious. This key distinction is what makes a passenger safer. Besides a passenger may warn the driver of something they noticed (as my wife does all too often).

In point of fact I think banning children in cars could do wonder for the sanity of pedestrian and parent alike. Besides, just think of the unintended consequences---if you couldn't drive your kids around, we might get more compact suburban planning and cut down on childhood obesity as kids get to walk to school because mommy's not allowed to drive them.

Or maybe we could just design cars like they currently design police vehicles, where the drivers (cops) are largely insulated from the activities of the hooligans riding in the back. Bonus points if we can get cop cars in the hands of families---I know I'd love it if I had kids and could just cuff 'em and throw 'em in the back for long trips.

If its a "feel good" law that can accomplish nothing, then so are hate crime laws..since enacted they have shown NO reduction in "hate" crimes...a little off topic, but it goes to show how ineffective many laws are...

reality-based:

Wrong. A passenger shuts up immediately when you touch the brakes or do anything out of the expected. The cell phone gabber just keeps chatting along oblivious.

SO, if you narrowly avoid a crash, you keep talking to the person on the cell phone? NO, what happens is, you drop the cell phone, yell some variant on "oh shit!" and take the needed action. They might keep talking on the cell, but I'm not listening. The verdict? Hands free conversation and conversation with an actual passenger are more or less the same thing. Actually, with the hands free cell conversation, you don't feel the need to glance over and look at the person you're talking to, so maybe the hands free cell conversation is safer.

The claim, in the paper, is that a large number of people -- enough to skew the group statistics -- react a hair more slowly. They may drop the phone then, but it's later -- enough that they might as well be driving drunk. That's entirely consistent with your description of how you might react.