Texting While Driving

Driving Us to Distraction

Texting is dangerous. Dialing is too. But is hands-free technology that much safer?

Most of us are neither pilots nor astronauts. We are not trained to steer large, hurtling hulks of steel and gasoline while manipulating small computers. So there's something blindingly obvious about the risks of texting while driving. Yet research is beginning to show that driving while simply talking on a cell phone--including using hands-free technology--can prove dangerous, even deadly.

In late July, the Center for Auto Safety (CAS) released hundreds of pages of a previously buried 2003 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study that identified the cell phone as a serious safety hazard when used on the road. A bill introduced last month in the Senate would require all states to impose a ban on texting while driving; 17 states (including, most recently, Illinois, on Aug. 6) and the District of Columbia have passed such a ban, and seven states have outlawed driver use of handheld communication devices altogether. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood considers cell phones such a problem that he is planning a summit next month to discuss the dangers of driving while distracted. And though it's impossible to accurately gauge how many car accidents nationwide are cell phone related, David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, estimates that only 2% of people are able to safely multitask while driving.

Strayer, who for more than a decade has been studying the effects driving and cell-phone use have on the brain, says those 2% are probably the same people who would be really good fighter pilots. Rarities. Some of Strayer's other findings show that most drivers tend to stare straight ahead while using a cell phone and are less influenced by peripheral vision. In other words, "cell phones," he says, "make you blind to your own bad driving."

And even though the common assumption is that hands-free technology has mitigated...