| A lot has happened in our recent cell phone legislative history - or the ones that you might trust. Colorado,
Delaware, Maryland and Tennessee banned cell phone use by young drivers
this year. They have all joined a strongly familiar list. A similar ban
approved last week by Illinois legislators awaits the governor's
signature. This year, 37 states have debated new laws restricting
drivers' use of cell phones, according to the National Conference of
State Legislatures. Sometimes reports have indicated that 40 states
have issued this same thing. So far, Hawaii is not among those
indicated. In the United States some 175
million people used cell phones as of January 2005, compared with
approximately 4.3 million in 1990, according to the Cellular
Telecommunications & Internet Association. How many of these cell phone users are using their phone while driving is unclear. Believe my opinion, there are a lot of them out there on the roads. These
expensive phones have become an integral part of most of our lives. We
are bound to investigate more of these items and a lot of them may
become a problem in our automobiles. However, the convenience they
offer must be judged against the hazards they pose. Inattentive driving
accounted for 6.4 percent of crash fatalities in 2003 — the latest data
available — according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Inattentive driving includes talking, eating, putting on make up and
attending to children. Using cell phones and other wireless or
electronic units are also considered distractions. Opponents
of cell phone bans point to other distractions that such legislation
does not address. California Assemblyman Jay La Suer pointed out to the
San Francisco Chronicle that the ban then being considered in his state
couldn't "create a hands-free device to eat a hamburger, or a French
fry picker-upper, or a serving mechanism for coffee." Other critics
have pointed out that there is nothing in the cell phone bans to stop
drivers equipped with hands-free devices from doing paperwork,
operating a laptop computer, GPS or eating a sandwich while driving and
talking. An August 2003 report from the
AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety concluded that drivers are far less
distracted by their cell phones than other common activities, such as
reaching for items on the seat or glove compartment or talking to
passengers. Wait a minute. What was that
one again in a prior paragraph? I believe that our former partner Raven
might have said something about those little things that we call
children. This man has cracked me up many times previously - don't miss
them either if you aren't a parent. Here is part of what he said: | 
Welcome To The Club
