How ridiculous is the banning of hand-held devices during driving? Next time you’re in the car, take a look at how many people are holding a cup of coffee or sipping on a soft drink, eating a donut or holding a cigarette out the window.

All these people are performing the same task with one hand, yet we’re not rushing to ban having coffee or smoking in cars.

And a study by the University of Virginia indicates the biggest actual distraction to driving is actually rubbernecking, followed closely by driver fatigue. Looking at scenery or landmarks came in third, followed by passenger distractions and then the reportedly biggest driving distraction – using hand held devices.

In all fairness, the study analyzed the results of 2,700 crashes involving 4,500 drivers, and contrary to what insurance companies would have you believe, drivers don’t have cell phones glued to their ears from the time they enter the car to the time when they park it. But, we are always looking around.

A 2001 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety backed up the results, with the overwhelming top cause being “things outside the car”, followed by “adjusting the radio” and “other vehicle occupants”. Cell phones were well down the list, just behind eating or drinking, and just ahead of smoking. The Ontario government actually presented that list to a 2005 International Conference on Distracted Driving. Ontario now has a ban on hand-held devices in vehicles.

Further, a U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study showed the number one distraction (29% of surveyed crashes) to be something outside the car, followed by objects or controls inside the car (21%, excluding cell phone use, which was its own category well down the list at only two percent) and passengers/children (11%).

So, how sensible is it to ban something that apparently is so little of a distraction? Probably it makes a lot of sense because it’s easy to enforce – “you have a cell phone stuck in your ear, so here’s your ticket” – whereas looking at the officer writing a ticket to a sport compact driver is not so easy to spot because the driver could be checking a blindspot (another needless distraction in today’s vehicles!).

Holding a coffee or a cigarette is easy; I don’t know why that one isn’t already in the books. On the other hand, it would be fairly difficult to legislate out other distractions – it isn’t very practical to remove all other seating positions in order to avoid passenger distractions because, after all, vehicles are made to transport people (you could mandate a monastery-like vow of silence, I suppose).

We also need most of those controls in the vehicle (even though some of us already refuse to be distracted into using a turn signal or flip on the headlights) so maybe voice command should be instituted for everything. But wait, that would involve talking so you’re replacing one type of distraction with another.

And even though addressing the top distraction would be difficult, a good start would be to stop putting up electronic signs telling us to avoid distractions and concentrate on our driving.

Tags: cell phone, distractions, passengers, roadside signs