The next stupid CA law.Follow

The problem is that as snippy as the statement was, you can't legistlate against "thinking". I doubt heavily that the distraction caused by talking on a Cell phone is automatic or debilitating. Certainly, you'll measure a statistical decrease in driving performance, but that's only because you've isolated a specific cause.

If we could somehow compare people who daydream while driving to those who don't, I'm quite sure we'd see similar results. So far, our driving codes have restricted themselves to limiting behavior that physically impairs drivers. Drinking physically slows your reactions. Old age does the same. Blindness causes other problems. Those prone to seizures can't drive as well.

It would be a significant legal step to start outlawing something based on the fact that it can cause a distraction. I also suspect that the studies are still too small and it's too early to state that this distraction can't be overcome. Clearly, we have members of the armed forces riding around in Tanks, Jets, and Helicopters who manage to communicate via headset while operating their vehicles. We don't consider them impaired as a result.

Holding a cellphone in your hand is going to always cause a physical reduction of your driving capabilties. Talking on a headset will not. Unless we're willing to start legistlating on what's going inside people's heads while they drive (which is the presumed reason for distraction when talking on a cell phone), we can't really restrict the headsets. I think that many drivers can talk on a cell phone and drive without impairment. Again. There's only a small body of work on this. Were those given the tests driving their car? Where they using their phone in the manner they usually use it? What's the learning curve? From what I've read, they just ran the test course 4 times. We can certainly expect that talking will distract someone a certain amount. The question is how much of the results were caused by the fact that they were talking while in an unfamiliar environment? Did they test a baseline by having a passenger in the car strike up the same conversation with them while they tried to drive the course? That would have been the correct way to determine if it was the act of talking on the phone, versus just plain talking while trying to operate an unfamiliar vehicle that caused the problems reported in the study.


Lots of questions still to be answered. I do tend to agree that the banning of hand held cell phones is premature. However, I can also see why legistlators are doing it. Heh. And I'm sure the headset manufacturers aren't unhappy about this either...