The Handy Dandy Cell Phone

            Imagine that it is a beautiful summer day and that you are running late for work. You decide to grab a granola bar for breakfast, planning to eat it while you are driving, in order to save time. As you travel along an extremely curvy road, you use one hand to steer the car, and the other to feed your eager stomach. Suddenly, you drop the granola bar by mistake! Then you look down for just a meager, split second Before you even can react for anything, the car in front of you has stopped and you have slammed into the back of them. Angry like a lion who hasn't been fed, you realize that you did not have enough time or distance to brake safely. Nationally, around 25 to 30 percent of car accidents are caused by distractions, like eating while driving (PR Newswire 1). Most recently there has been much controversy over one specific distraction, the handy dandy cell phone. Many people want the use of hand-held cell phones in vehicles banned because they are claimed to distract a driver's mind, body, and attention driving (PR Newswire 1). These people have rarely seen reliable statistics, since cell phones account for a very small percentage of car accidents (Reinfurt 10). They account for a lower percent of accidents than other driving distractions (11). For the government to ban something such as cellular phones while driving would cost a lot of money for the government, and phone companies would lose a lot of money. Cell phones are so popular across the nation that the public carries them along, even in the car. .
             Cell phones are not going to be banned nationally because they cause an insignificant percentage of accidents, banning them would cost too much money, and too many people use them to effectively ban them. According to an AAA-sponsored University of North Carolina study recorded in 2001, less than two percent of car accidents are caused by the usage of cellular phones (Reinfurt 10).