Agreed, you can definitely tell they like it. And for the pleasantly surprised part, I said 'mostly' didn't I?

Hmm... I am not quite sure what you're saying here. Solution vs system?

Anything you have to struggle with to enable you to answer or reject a call, like a wired ear bud or even a bluetooth one, is bad. I think a built in solution in the car is a good solution, but the parrot principle is good too. If you are going to be available on the phone at all, that is.

I'll readily admit that having no phone in the car is safer than having one turned on.

Also, they said it was a good match for early adaptors. Hey, that's us! ^_^

All though I agree on the principle, I don't agree on the selected button. On my current phone I use the volume toggle more or less constantly while talking on the phone. What other buttons are there? The camera shutter...

My phone has a button for use while driving. I use the 'off' button. End of distraction.

That is without doubt the safest... Uhm... second safest option.

http://www.2da6s.com/2009/07/cell-ph...ed-inside-car/

Errr... what did that say? I couldn't quite make it out. Sounded like it had been eaten by a Babelfish.

As I and others now have said, all you have to do is turn of your phone when you're driving and you won't have the problem of being distracted by the phone ringing. So the whole "the phone is ringing and I'm so distracted" argument is no excuse for talking on the phone while driving.

As far as your subjective experience goes. I'm pretty sure that one person's subjective experience is not considered by any standard to be meaningful evidence or to prove anything. I've been citing scientific studies. Studies which include discussing how people are really good at subjectively deluding themselves into thinking they're doing something well, when the opposite is true. So I think you're just fooling yourself. But you can explain how subjectively you know you're driving well to the group of school children that you mow down, if they're still alive enough to hear you.

This is actually what you said:

That sure seems to imply that you think passenger conversations, radios, singing, and chewing gum are equally distracting. I don't see anything there saying you were talking about cumulative effects. You just keep switching your argument around ,slipping back and forth between the question of rejecting calls, the question of talking on the phone, and the question of other distractions, but no matter what angle you take, you come to the conclusion that driving will having a phone conversation is safe enough (in fact safer than listening to the phone ring and not answering) and as safe as tuning the radio, chewing gum, etc. That's why I think you're making excuses.

On the other hand, I never said that drunken driving wasn't as bad as it is. I assumed that everyone recognizes that drunken driving is really bad. And so when I cited studies that show that people on the phone (including on headsets) drive worse than drunk drivers, I assumed a reasonable person would be able to understand that means talking on the phone and drivng is pretty bad. It does not at all follow that drunken driving is therefore okay or that anyone was suggesting this. The fact that talking on the phone and driving may be worse than drunken driving, does not make the first thing less bad. That's just more of your slippery slope, logical fallacy, reasoning.

Theory? I cited actually studies. It's not a theory. They put people in cars and in simulators, gave them alcohol or gave them cell phones, and had them drive. They looked at broad statistical evidence from actual accidents. And they found in actual reality people who talk on the cell phone, with or without a handsfree headset, drive worse and have actual real accidents. One study at the University of Utah found that talking on the cell phone (handsfree or not) causes 330,000 injuries in the U.S per year, and 2600 deaths. So that's my evidence. Your evidence is your "subjective" feeling that you drive safe enough with a handsfree headset, which is neither good evidence (you're most likely fooling yourself, something also considered in these studies), nor statistically meaningful.

Here are the studies and more again:

http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=062206-1
http://www.distracteddriving.ca/engl...avance_001.pdf
http://www.ama.ab.ca/images/images_p...ellPhones4.pdf
http://www.livescience.com/technolog...ll_danger.html
http://mysite.verizon.net/horrey/pap...HF2006meta.pdf

These are scientific studies carried out at universties.

It's not that hard to test yourself actually. The simplest study for testing txting and cellphone usage while driving just had a straight empty area that you could drive on and a light on the dashboard that would go from green to red.

Just drive straight, talking or texting as you normally do. The light goes from green to red randomly and you have to stop as quickly as possible. The scientist that did that research was surprised at how different his results were when not txting or talking when compared to driving.

Of course the interesting thing about talking on the cellphone is I wonder if how much you pay attention to the voice conversation affects you. I know I can't multi-task when talking on the phone and say play a videogame, what usually happens is I tune out the phone and wind up playing the videogame ignoring everything on the phone side. Careful guys this can get you in trouble with your gf.

Yes, one of the things that's interesting in these studies is that when it comes to just driving straight and staying in a lane, people on the phone, texting, or who have been drinking for that matter, do an okay job. Although they do tend to randomly slow down, which aside form being dangerous is just incredibly annoying and I see people on the phone doing this all the time.

But the problem arises when it comes to reaction times, as you explain. When something unexpected happens, people on the phone (including with handsfree headsets) react significantly more slowly. And at the speeds that cars travel even a fraction of a second is easily the difference between averting an accident and plowing over a pedestrian.

In response to your last question, the studies actually show that it is the conversation itself that is the distraction (as I explained above). It's not the listening, though, so much as the talking (hence why listening to the radio isn't as distracting). Having to formulate a response turns out to really occupy and distract the brain. (Probably also why you're able to tune out your gf and play a video game, as long as she's talking and you're "listening.") But the problem with the cellphone is that even when something happens on the road, the person on the other end of the line just keeps talking, and the driver tends to just go ahead and try to respond (all the while driving into a brick wall, etc.). Whereas if the passenger is in the car, they usually go silent or yell as the brick wall approaches and let the driver do something, rather than expect a response to whatever they just said about the weather.