LIVING IN IOWA: New study shows that using a cell phone in a car is like drunk driving; this explains a lot
by Dan Brawner · January 15, 2009

Should states ban drivers from using cell phones? The National Safety Council argues that driving while talking on the phone is as dangerous as drunk driving, making it four times more likely to have an accident. And yet, according to the NSC, of the 270 million cell phone owners in the U.S., 80 percent admit talking on the phone while driving. Which probably means the remaining 20 percent are lying. In any case, that’s like having 216 million drunk drivers on the road. This explains why drivers at the four-way intersection of Hwys. 1 and 30 can’t agree on who gets to go first.

The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis calculates that using a cell phone while driving accounts for 6 percent of all vehicle crashes, causing 2,200 deaths and 12,000 injuries a year in the U.S. There are not equivalent statistics for most other developed nations because most of them, including practically every European Union country, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Russia, don’t allow talking on the phone while driving. In Ireland, violators are fined $380 per offense and up to three months in jail on the third offense. In Norway, the fine is $600 per offense and in the Netherlands, it’s $2,650 or two weeks in jail. In Saudi Arabia, they cut off a hand for the first two offenses. But hands-free phoning is allowed after the second offense. (I made that up.)

In the U.S., some states do restrict younger drivers from using cell phones, but officers admit this is rarely enforced. With so many drivers using cell phones, it would seem futile to try to arrest every driver talking on the phone. (In this country, even murder would be allowed if everybody did it.) Americans are as attached to our cell phones as we are to our cars. And separating the two would seem impossible. Especially now that cell phones can access the Internet, display road maps, let you read the news, listen to music, watch TV and play video games.

As the most technology-addicted people, Americans also imagine we are the best at multitasking. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist recently interviewed on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition stated, “People can’t multitask very well and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves.”

Miller observed that, according to laboratory tests, the human brain is not very good at doing two things at once and doing them well.

This explains why those people walking around the grocery store, wearing their Blue Tooth headsets, chatting with some invisible companion, come home, only to discover that they’ve bought Pampers and Puppy Chow when they don’t have either kids or dogs.

And if talking on the phone in the car is the risk equivalent of drunk driving, then text-messaging while driving is like drinking a quart of tequila and trying to slalom ski. The reason human beings have evolved to this point is that we need our opposable thumbs for everything. And if our thumbs are busy typing, they can’t also be steering our car and anybody who thinks they can is applying for a “Darwin Award” (see “natural selection”).

Of course, all this begs the question as to the many other things we shouldn’t be doing while driving – i.e. singing, changing the radio station, reading maps, kissing, settling arguments or writing term papers. Since you can’t get Americans from living in our cars, somebody will just have to come up with a cell phone that does the driving for us.