Ontario to ban texting/talking on cell phones while driving

Good news. I was under the impression that talking on the cellphone was already banned. I don't plan on getting a bluetooth -- I don't talk that much on the cellphone anyway.

canabiz said:

Effective late October. I wonder if this will extend to GPS devices?

http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=5eba987f-1801-4cb5-b986-8f048c317060

So how will you cope? Getting one of those futuristic Bluetooth earpiece or just one of those wired set?

In case of emergency, i imagine you can always pull over and take the call.

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They banned talking on a cell phone while driving in NL a couple years back and I like the idea! Some people are way too distracted talking on the phone to drive properly.

It's been illegal here in Québec for about a year now, although you still see plenty of people talking on their phones while driving.

The statistics on the risks of distracted driving are pretty compelling; one study estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents in the United States in 2002. There's a roundup of articles in the New York Times here:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/technology/series/driven_to_distraction/index.html

I'm in Ontario and I thought it was coming into effect in Sept. I guess I was wrong. I got a BlueAnt ST3 bluetooth device because I use my cell in the car. The company picked up the tab.

This is great news. People who talk on the phone while driving are impeding the traffic and endangering other drivers.

Interestingly, I remember reading studies showing that using Bluetooth headsets does not improve the driver's ability to concentrate, and I believe some of the cellphone/driving laws ban those as well. It's not intuitive, because you wouldn't think there's a difference between talking into your headset and talking to a passenger, but apparently there is, and the cellphone is much more distracting.

I do keep my cellphone with me in the car, but whenever I get a call I pull over to take it, or give it to my passenger to take the call (if I have a passenger). If I'm on the highway and can't take the call, I just let it ring and get the voicemail next time I come to a rest area.

brad said:

It's not intuitive, because you wouldn't think there's a difference between talking into your headset and talking to a passenger, but apparently there is, and the cellphone is much more distracting.

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You are right, it's not intuitive and I always thought this was overblown until I heard the following arguement. When you are talking to a passenger you may be just as distracted as talking on a cell, however, you now have another individual in the vehicle to warn you of potential dangers. That does make sense. So maybe they should allow cellphone usage as long as there are other passengers.

I almost got ran over when crossing an intersection by a lady talking on her cell while turning right. She didn't even see me too. Had I not stepped back, I would have had at least a broken leg. I wish an officer was there to take away her license.