Hold that thought!

[Melathys]

It would be interesting to see a comparison test between talking on the phone, talking to a passenger, and drunk driving.

That was done, too (also by Mythbusters and a few other shows). Talking to a passenger isn't as bad as driving drunk, but talking on the phone (even with hands-free speech through bluetooth and speakerphone) was WAY worse than drinking and driving.

Hmm, I wonder why talking on the phone is so much worse than talking to a passenger, one would think that they would be the same, if not the other way around.

While listening to Car Talk on NPR, I heard the best idea yet on why its different. They said that talking on the phone, the person you're talking to isn't helping you watch the road. They won't stop talking, or even warn you, if something is happening on the road. A passenger, however, will.

And every time I hear anyone talk about texting while driving, I think of this impromptu test that Car and Driver did. comparing texting and drinking while driving.

http://carvideos.caranddriver.com?bcpid ... 7137255001

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/te ... rous-is-it

[Fivelives]

I don't think anyone's conclusively shown WHY phones are worse than passengers, but intuitively it seems like NPR is on to something there.

[Snake-Aes]

I text while driving but I use voice to text. Did the study have any stats on that? The last report I had read showed that hands free stuff wasn't any safer, because it's more about the shift in concentration from the road to the conversation.

Pretty much. Sometimes people on TV would get drivers to drive through a hard course with and without the cellphone, then do the same on the road. People both good and bad. All of them had their reaction time multiplied 4 or 5 times while texting.

[Kelaan]

It's something to do with you needing a cognitive model of who you're talking to, and it's harder to infer meaning over merely sound, versus having peripheral vision or other things. Talking with people "not here" is the big distraction, whether or not you're holding a phone.

[Fivelives]

I'd bet that it has something to do with phone conversations naturally being more immediate and pressing. If you're talking to someone on the phone, they expect responses in a reasonable amount of time, whereas a person sitting next to you will be more understanding of pauses while you focus your attention on the road.

Which is why I think the NPR segment makes sense and sounds like the right answer.

[Skye1013]

Before getting to this page, I had come to the same conclusion, not that my vote necessarily has a lot of weight, but thought I'd throw my two cents in

[fafhrd]

6k doesn't really sound like much compared to how many people drive every day of a year. What are the numbers for other causes?

[Candiru]

On my old Nokia I could text with one hand without looking at the phone at all perfectly safely. With a new fancy android touch screen its practically impossible to even use the phone with one hand, let along while driving. So no more texting while driving!

[Fridmarr]

6k doesn't really sound like much compared to how many people drive every day of a year. What are the numbers for other causes?

10,228 died from drunk driving in 2010 according to http://www.alcoholstats.com/page.aspx?id=136

One of the things about saying "X is X times worse than driving drunk" is that usually driving drunk is considered the minimum blood alcohol in which you are "legally" drunk. That's generally .08 - .10 in the US, but of course people will drive drunk with many times that amount of alcohol in their system, and at that point they are obviously far more likely to have an accident than driving while texting.