I was sitting at a red light with my daughter in the car with me and I looked up in the rear view mirror to see a van barrelling at me at around 45 mph. They ran right into us and right before the crash I could see the driver (a grandmother and the parent of my daughter's teacher) turned around in the front seat talking to the little girl in the back seat (who turned out to be the daughter of my daughter's teacher). She also had a cell phone in her hand at the same time. So see, cell phones do cause crashes :o)

Cell phones, kids yacking to each other while driving, putting on makeup, eating and drinking, smoking, fiddling with radio, reading the newspaper, just about anything distracting (as you mentioned).


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I know someone that did the same thing because of a donut they were trying to eat and dropped. Anything that distracts a driver is a hazard. Driving + multitasking = crash.
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>>It's a fact that cell phones cause accidents. My daughter's boyfriend was stopped at a red light and his cell phone fell on the floor. When he reached down to get it, his foot slipped off the break and he bumped into the car in front of him. No cell phone, no crash. :o)
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>>
>>>http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/study-finds-that-reduced-phone-use-does-not-cut-crashes/
>>>
>>>Laws banning cellphone use while driving apparently haven’t reduced crashes, according to a study released on Friday that compared the number of total crashes before the ban with the number after. The study found virtually no difference in the numbers, a finding that had the researchers scratching their heads.
>>>
>>>“We were very surprised,” said Adrian Lund, the president of the Highway Loss Data Institute that conducted the study and an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
>>>
>>>The thought was, of course that if law were passed that decreased cellphone use, then there should be fewer crashes. But that was not the case.
>>>
>>>
>>>I love this next line.
>>>
>>>“You know that there should be fewer,” he said. “We were looking for that, and we aren’t seeing that pattern,” said Mr. Lund, who is also the insurance institute’s president.
>>>
>>>They've come for our teens, our cell phones and PDAs and yet their data has not yielded the desired results. Clearly the solution will be to go after something else like eating or music or crying babies???
>>>
>>>“We still don’t think we understand this fully,” said Mr. Lund. But one possibility is that while cellphones are a distraction, maybe they are not “all that much worse a distraction than many of the other things that we do.”
>>>
>>>“Our real problem is to do something about the bigger problem of distracted driving, whether that’s cellphones, whether that’s the baby crying in the back seat, whether it’s the CD you dropped on the floor, whatever it is.”
>>>
>>>What direction do you think we'll take now that we have data suggesting these behavior control laws do not accomplish their goals? Repeal or new restrictions? ;)
>>>
>>>As always, with any study I cite I always include my two favorites as a self imposed disclaimer.
>>>http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915
>>>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972683557627104.html