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driving it for their manner of driving. Indeed, I'm sure that for some people, the very act of driving is a sufficient division of attention to be dangerous.

If nothing else, legislation ought to strive for consistency and when looking for it, we should consider a wide variety of variables that govern safety, and balance them with economic value. If we didn't we'd still be arranging for friends to be walking in front of the car with a red flag so as not to frighten the horses!

Fundamentally, those over-zealous legislators that have made cell phone use illegal while driving, have focused on the wrong thing. A much more level-headed approach is to address the root cause, which is the distraction itself. That begins by understanding that the distraction is caused on the one hand by handling the phone if not hands-free, and much more importantly on the other hand, the emotional state of the conversation passing through it.

For the handling part, we can easily integrate cell phones into the overall configuration of the vehicle and this needn't require built-in cell phones. Hands-free systems with voice recognition would make the handling part of the distraction all but a non-issue, and for hands-free capability, I wouldn't hesitate to require it legally. It is generally BOTH more appealing and safer.

To act preventively for the distraction part, beyond criminalizing driving while distracted, we have to look to technological innovation. If only we could figure out ways of detecting, eliminating or mitigating distraction, and (safely!) disabling the vehicle or alerting the driver when such distraction is detected, we would do ourselves a much greater service than singling out only one problematic device for banning. Moreover, if done properly, such systems promise to affect those equally dangerous conditions where no accessory or device is involved.

Now, I wouldn't be going down this track if I didn't have a modicum of optimism about what's under development. This is an area that, at least before the financial meltdown, was consuming millions of automobile company development dollars. Some progress has been made in detecting, for example, when drivers are losing alertness by getting drowsy. We have also seen technologies which would immobilize the vehicle if drivers evidence too much alcohol on their breath. Technology does exist which could integrate the numerous factors which a person exhibits when distracted in a phone call, into a verdict about the level of attention

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