My psych 1 professor in college, Barry Schwartz (author of The Paradox of Choice), theorized that the difference between talking on a cell phone and talking to someone sitting next to you was that the person on the cell phone doesn't know when tricky traffic conditions arise and when they should stop talking, which is more frequent than one generally consciously realizes when sitting in a car.

I theorize further that due to the low sound quality of telephones, you need to focus more intensely on understanding what the person on the other end of the line is saying than you do on what someone next to you is saying.

just as impaired - well, actually, they had more accidents, so one can infer they are AT LEAST as impaired, IF NOT MORE, than drunk drivers.

It's weird how people are just as endangered (or more, apparently) by phone-using drivers as they are by drunk drivers and yet generally seem a lot less outraged by it.

I suspect it's because talking on a phone doesn't trigger the puritanical judging-of-others response that has so been so effective in prompting two decades of increasingly severe penalties for what was once considered a relatively minor offense. Whereas drinking is sinful, talking on the phone is productive and good for the economy. Everybody does it!

Thus, so far there is no Mothers Against Cell Phones (that I know of) lobbying for tougher laws.

I've started just assuming that someone yapping on a cell phone while driving doesn't see my pedestrian self. More often than not, it's true, and I'm sick of those little "oops" waves (with the face all scrunched up) from someone crossing my path in a 2-ton vehicle. If only my startle reflex made me projectile vomit, I could really do a number on their window.

Flamingbanjo is 100% correct. The morality police will never get around to cell phones; they're ON cell phones. Funny, because booze BUILT America.

"slower and more erratically"?

that's just absurd. i drive erratically, sure, but just as fast as always.

Last year I was crossing the street (when I was supposed to -I don't dart out into traffic) and I was hit by a large SUV. The driver was on her cell phone at the time and just didn't see me. She also couldn't really see me because the car was so high. I am 5'6 so I am not that short to begin with -but who really needs that combination of things like a giant car that can't even see a pedestrian of average height while having "important" conversations about how they are bored and their coffee wasn't quite right.

It's gotten to the point now where I'm surprised to see a driver who ISN'T yapping on their cell, fucking with their IPOD, eating, shaving, putting on makeup, whatever. Seeing someone who's paying attention to driving has become a refreshing rarity.

As for myself, I discovered a couple of years ago that I could not use my Nextel two-way (an unfortunate requirement of my work) while driving. Luckily, I learned the lesson at the cost of one ex-squirrel, not someone's kid or a head-on into another car, but I still felt bad about the rodent. I'm quite sure I'd have been able to miss it had not half my attention been on that stupid walkie-talkie. I won't use it, or the cell, in the car at all anymore unless the car is stopped.