" wrote:

"RT" wrote:


John Smith wrote in message
ink.net...
Most people can't drive a car and talk on the cell phone at the same time.

But it's accepted that they can drive and talk to the pax (including in the
back seat) at the same time.

Why do I have a problem with this?

I don't think that I do, it's not the same thing somehow,
something to do with the attention required to decipher the
intelligence from the much lower fidelity telephone earpiece and
listening to a (probably familiar) human voice a couple of feet
away unhampered by electronics.

Both talking on a cell phone (hands free is almost as bad as hand held)
and talking to passengers are distractors....

The thing about talking to a passenger is that they are also in the
car... they can (and often do) look at the road conditions and think a
bit before talking, they also offer warnings if they see something that
the driver doesn't... meanwhile, someone on the other end of the phone..
they have no idea what is going on in the car...

(A fellow PhD student wants to examine this very thing....)