Here we go again – The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is recommending a total ban on the use of electronic devices by drivers.  There is no doubt that texting while driving is dangerous. But I have a difficult time with the logic that hands-free use of a cellphone is more dangerous than talking to the person in the front seat and I would suggest that hands-free cellphone use is less distracting than talking to the person in the back seat. (Every watch a driver tilt their head toward the back while talking to someone in the back seat?)

But those activities, hands free-cellphone use and talking to passengers, pale when compared to other activities that we routinely see on the road.  Let me begin with my all-time favorite – applying makeup or doing hair while driving. This is over the chart distracting as it requires the use of the hands, sometime both, and worse requires the driver to look in the mirror. How about someone dealing with unruly children in the back seat?  Or driving with Fido or some other pet in their arms?  Or reading while driving – that’s right it is not uncommon to see someone with a book or paper resting on the steering wheel while driving.  There are other activities that are probably more distracting than hands-free cellphone use – unwrapping the burger, eating, trying to clean the ketchup or mustard that you spilled on your shirt and I suspect that you can add a few of your own.

Another side of the hands-free issue is that it is unenforceable.  If the driver has nothing in their hands – using a Bluetooth headset or has their phone synced to their car – how is any law enforcement officer to know they are talking on their cell phone?  Few things erode our confidence in governing bodies than when they pass unenforceable laws and regulations. Texting while driving is already banned in many states, and I suspect that trend will continue.  But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Does it not make more sense for us to focus our efforts on all forms of distracted driving rather than an outright ban on hands-free cellphone use?