cell phone use should be banned

"Studies show that driving while talking on a cell phone is extremely dangerous and puts drivers at a four times greater risk of a crash," said Janet Froetscher, president and CEO of the NSC. "Driving drunk is also dangerous and against the law. When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away. It's time to take the cell phone away."
A study from the Harvard Center of Risk Analysis estimates that cell phone use while driving contributes to 6 percent of crashes, which equates to 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries, 12,000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year, according to a statement from the NSC today
Talking on a cell phone may be less distracting than some other activities people may engage in while driving, Froetscher admits,Studies from the University of Utah show that hands-free devices do not make cell phone calls while driving safe. Another study demonstrates that talking to passengers, as opposed to talking on a cell phone, actually makes adult drivers safer, because passengers help alert drivers to potential driving risks, the NSC stated.
"Talking on a phone while driving is dangerous, period, and our advice to drivers is to simply don't do it," Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association of Washington, DC, said last year. "It taxes the cognitive skills of your brain at the expense of the driving at hand, and if the conversation is stressful your reaction time will not be as quick. Also, whoever you are talking with on the phone does not know what is going on around you, whereas someone in the car talking to you is aware of the circumstances."
"We found that people are as impaired when they drive and talk on a cell phone as they are when they drive intoxicated at the legal blood-alcohol limit," Drews said.
Missouri highway crash on Aug. 5, 2010, which killed two people and injured 38. The chain-reaction crash of four vehicles included two school buses. was caused by a pickup driver, Daniel Schatz, 19, who was one of the fatalities, sending 11 text messages in the 11 minutes before the crash. His pickup rammed the back of a tractor-trailer that had slowed for construction on Interstate 44 near Gray Summit.
Schatz's truck was then rear-ended by a school bus, which was rear-ended by another school bus. The buses, which investigators found had brake problems, carried members of the John F. Hodge High School band. A student, Jessica Brinker, 15, who sat in the last row of the first bus, died in the crash.
"Two lives lost in the blink of an eye," said Deborah Hersman, the board chairman. "No call, no text, no update is worth a life."
An estimated 3,092 traffic fatalities in 2010 were blamed on distracted drivers, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. More than one in six drivers send text messages while driving, and nearly half of drivers less than 25 years old are doing it, according to a NHTSA survey released last week. A survey released by the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway TrafficSafety Administration found that while most drivers understood the dangers of using electronic devices while behind the wheel, a large percentage used them anyway.
According to the survey, approximately 660,000 drivers used cellphones or manipulated electronic devices while driving during daylight hours, numbers that have held steady since 2010.
While fiddling with a stereo or iPod is dangerous and distracting while driving, according to the NHTSA, texting and hand-held cellphone use were considered more dangerous and have garnered more attention from recent surveys and studies.
The NHTSA survey also found that 74 percent of drivers support a ban on hand-held cellphone use, while 94 percent believe texting while driving should be outlawed.Texting while driving is currently outlawed in 39 states and the District of Columbia (see map below). Hand-held cellphone use is outlawed in 10 states, and the District of Columbia.
Despite the fact that almost all drivers surveyed by AT&T said texting and driving was dangerous, 43 percent of teenage drivers said they still did it, while 49 percent of older commuters admitted the same.
"Many drivers see distracted driving as risky when other drivers do it, but do not recognize how their own driving deteriorates," NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said in a statement. "I urge all motorists to use common sense and keep their attention focused solely on the task of safely driving."According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), at any given time, more than ten million drivers in the United States are using cell phones.
Cell Phones and Driving: The Debate Over Safety
Some studies have found that the act of dialing or answering cell phones distracts drivers and contributes to increased accident rates.Researchers have found that using a hands-free device is not necessarily safer than using a handheld phone. Many drivers spend more time fiddling with the earpieces or headphones of their hands-free device than they would dialing a handheld cell phone, and volume problems with hands-free phones have been cited as creating distractions for the driver.
State Bans

Handheld phones. Seven states have enacted laws banning the use of handheld cell phones while driving: California, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington . With the exception of Maryland, all of these states allow "primary enforcement of an offense." That means that police officers can pull you over for using a handheld cell phone without any other reason for the traffic stop.
Novice or juvenile drivers. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have enacted special cell phone driving laws for novice drivers (for example, those with a learner's permit) or young drivers . For example, in California, drivers under the age of 18 cannot use any type of communication device while driving.
School bus drivers. Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have banned school bus drivers from using cell phones while passengers are present. (
Texting. Twenty-nine states, Washington D.C., and Guam have banned text messaging for all drivers.