I'm going to chime in on this because as an avid motorcyclist, I was almost killed by a young teenager yapping on her cell phone when she pulled out in front of me at an intersection.
Agreed with freedumb2003: this is a states' issue. The Feds need to butt the hell out until they figure out where this issue is required to be handled by them. Constitution doesn't say anything at all about this.
That said:
There are some pretty heated arguments on both sides of the issue. One side says, "So are we supposed to ban ALL conversation in the vehicle - where does it end?" and the other says, "Yapping on cell phones is an unacceptable risk to life and limb and needs to be banned in all forms."
Fact is, we're talking about risk. The mere fact of driving a motor vehicle itself is risky; traffic statistics clearly show that we're much more likely to be injured or killed in a traffic accident than we are in a plane crash.
Now that we're talking from an even playing field vis a vis risk, we need to gauge precisely how much risk is acceptable.
I can't quote chapter and verse, but I can tell you that there are tangible differences between talking to somebody in a car (note I said "talking", not trying to bitch slap unruly kids or arguing with a passenger) and talking to somebody on a device. For some strange, unknown reason, we tend to react first and strongest to a person who is tethered to us electronically rather than somebody who's next to us.
How many times have you been sitting across the desk from somebody having a conversation about a work issue and have the phone ring? How tempted are you to completely forego the conversation you're having with a live person in front of you in favor of answering the phone?
I submit the temptation is very, very strong to answer the phone. The obvious question is why?
Fear of the unknown? That phone call might be representative of information that I need/want to have and the immediacey can't be determined by looking at Caller ID, so I'd better answer it! That's one idea.
Another is, much moreso than the kid that's bouncing around like a yo-yo in the back of the car, the kid is contained and cannot injure himself more than I can when I finally have a chance to stop this car and give him what-for. So maybe that idea allows us to respond slightly less to a crisis in the back seat when we're whizzing along at 70 mph.
We can talk about eating while driving, drinking coffee and spilling it while driving, searching for a dropped cigarette while driving, all kinds of inherently dangerous things.
How much risk do those things pose for us, from a purely global perspective? In other words, how often do those things happen to us and how much legislation should we consider enacting to deal with them?
The preponderance of cell phone usage in this country is unbelievable. Seems you're not somebody unless you've got a cell phone. And since just about everybody in this country drives a motor vehicle of some sort, it's natural that using a communication tool inside the moving vehicle is an understandable byproduct.
I consider the government in all its forms to be a necessary evil and I loathe expanding it for most reasons. But in the interest of public safety, these issues have to be measured and analyzed, bereft of emotional involvement (and if people aren't emotionally involved with their friggin' cell phones, my name is Barack Obama and I'm here to help you).
Appropriate legal decisions have to be made. And enforced.
For one, count me in the camp of banning cell phone usage. And if you cause a traffic accident because you were searching for a dropped cigarette, slurping your coffee and dropping it, eating a Whopper, or trying to bitch slap one of your kids, you have entered into the realm of liability that way too. Indeed, just by turning on the ignition of your car, you assume liability for all the damage you might cause as a result.
As distasteful as this sounds, we therefore need to enact laws to protect us from each other.
