Phones and driving

Is it legal to drive and use a phone at the same time? should I be using a headset? Oh, how about those car kits? I know, a bluetooth headset, aren't they so cool?

Whatever... the thing is, no matter what gadget you use, it is very dangerous to use the phone while driving. You see, the problem is not that I am not using the right gadget, the problem is that my brain is not capable enough to handle both tasks at the same time. I know, I know lots of people do it all the time. But also lots of people cause accidents because of that.

The main argument here is that driving is a very demanding task for the average brain (person) and if on top of that you add the task of talking to somebody else then that pretty much overflows it, it's the needle that broke the camel's back, gone, kaput...

Something similar happens when the driver is talking to the passenger. But in this case the passenger can clue in the driver's body language, grunts, etc and is also exposed to the road situation to realize that the driver cannot continue talking while trying to make a left turn or passing a long truck. Compare that to having a phone conversation where there are no alternative clues, no body language, no road situation, maybe the grunts are still there but not very clear. On top of that the mobile phone has to filter the voice, code it into lots of 1's and 0's, etc to perform the magic of mobile communication, and by doing so the phone tosses out the window most of the little extra sounds that we make to say "I hear you", "I'm not paying attention", "Oh that's funny", "holy crap! that car is running the red light in front of me!".

A little real story to illustrate this. A couple of years ago during the summer I went to rent some movies from the local video store. It was a really nice day, bright, sunny and hot. I was wearing my yellow biking T-shirt and a yellow helmet, because yellow is supposed to be the colour that we can distinguish the easiest, thus being more conspicuos . So I am waiting on the corner to cross a two way street on my bike, the traffic light just turned red on the passing cars, everybody stopped, I began crossing with the rest of the pedestrians and I see this car coming on the empty middle lane, this lane was marked as left turn only. I kept checking on him, and it kept coming, it didn't look like it was going to stop, I am reaching the middle of road and I realized that it wasn't going to stop, so I stopped. My front wheel slightly onto the other half of the road. The car just kept comming, past the red light, going straight to the cars facing him (and me in the middle), the driver gracefully sways to the right to avoid me and the other car facing me, and as it is passing in front of me at about 10 Km/h, the driver gives me the look of "what the hell are you doing in the middle of the road?", and of course he was on the phone.

So he did not realize that he had just ran a red light, went straight on a left turn only lane and there were pedestrians crossing, even when I was wearing yellow on a sunny day!

Let me say in his defence that I think that was not stupidity, it is just too much for the regular brain. The conversation might have turned too demanding on a critical road situation.

I rest my case.