Let me ask you a question, how many of you talk on a cell phone at least a few times a day.
And how many of you drive a car a few times a day.
Well what I am going to talk about today is why combining those two activities is something you should avoid doing, even with a hands free system .
We've all seen drivers talking on their cell phones and trying to drive at the same time. Can driving while chatting on a cell phone be a dangerous combination? Most governing bodies seem to think so. .
Though they were once considered rare luxuries, cell phones have become a commonplace possession over the last few years. Thanks in part to advances in wireless technology and a huge public demand, cell phones have been made affordable to almost anyone wishing to pay for the service plans. .
As the popularity of cell phones have increased in the last five years, so have the number of public safety advocates who link cell phone use by drivers to numerous minor and fatal automobile accidents.
Scientific studies have established strong correlations between cell phone usage and accidents. A study of Canadian drivers with cell phones found that "the risk of a collision when using a cell phone was four times higher than the risk when a cell phone was not being used" .
This risk is similar to the hazard associated with driving with a blood alcohol level just above the legal limit. Society doesnt have much patience for those causing accidents due to alcohol consumption, and now the use of cell phones by drivers is coming to be seen as a comparable problem.
Given what the evidence suggests, the next important question is the magnitude of the problem. That is, how many accidents each year are caused by people using cellular phones while driving? The logical place to find that information would be in police crash reports.
However, as of 1999 only two states, Oklahoma and Minnesota, include "cellular phone use" as a possible factor on their police crash reports, and only these two states train their police officers to check for such use as a factor contributing to the accident.
