Gadgetory

dealing with mobile devices in the car has been approached three major ways first of all you've got the family of Bluetooth hands-free either brought in or built into the car and headset technology secondly you've got an ever-increasing voice recognition both in the car and on the mobile device itself to try and get your hands and eyes off of it and thirdly you've got laws and public awareness campaigns that use both stick and carrot to try and get you to do the right thing or at least do it in a safer way 17 states currently ban any handheld use of a mobile device while driving 48 banned texting specifically with only Montana and Arizona holding out how's it all working well the latest US Department of Transportation research indicates two things the numbers aren't as high as you might think and those numbers aren't changing much either in 2013 the latest data available researchers observed over 37 thousand cars stop for at least 10 seconds in traffic or at a light at almost 1,400 locations around the country drivers holding a phone to their ear has been observed to decline modestly from 5.2 percent in 2012 to four point six percent observed in 2013 that's still about six hundred twenty thousand cars at any given time during the day being driven by someone who has half their hands and at least half their mind on a call the other interesting trend line is visible manipulation of a handheld device now that rolls up texting email entering a GPS destination skimming facebook what have you it's gone from point four percent before the iPhone was introduced to 1.7 percent today or about 230,000 cars on us roads and any given time of day it pays to double check your state's laws on handheld calling texting while driving and handheld use at all and follow them there so many technologies that make it easy to do now it's just the right thing and remember that even a small percent of drivers doing those adds up to the better part of a million accidents waiting to happen more realities of modern driving revealed now at CNET on cars comm click on smarter driving