Quote:
Originally Posted by Qingdai
The thing about hands free cell phones, is I see people who have them and they look just like ear phones. I'm pretty sure that Oregon, in particular, bans the use of head phones while driving, so I'm not sure which gray area this falls into.
Not that I ever looked it up because I had a music-less car or anything.

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Yeah...I seem to remember that, as well. I remember going through driver's training in high school and having them inform us that Oregon law forbade the wearing of earphones (then, primarily transister radio earphones) as they were felt to interfere with hearing emergency vehicle sirens. I don't know if the law has been excised from the statutes, or, if like many a municipal ordinance, it is still there, but ignored.
Curiously, from my reading of the research, music playing in the vehicle is not a significant distraction, but changing channels, or cds, or messing with the controls, are. Unlike phone conversations, such activities are usually brief in duration. I'd say the extent of the distraction has a bearing on the danger of the distraction. Having the driver turn their head around physically to bark directives to errant children (or adults) in the back seat while the car is moving in traffic is deadly, and in my estimation worse than talking on a cell phone. It is the presumed 'acceptance' of the electronic communications device as some kind of 'right', along with the expansion of the number of those kinds of devices in the hands of motorists, and the misbegotten belief that while others may not be able to multitask safely,
they can...that's what I think is the concern with electronic devices and operating motor vehicles.
From the beginning, when skeptics indicated a concern with behaviors which were obviously unsafe...flippancy was the response and ignorance the answer. As you can see, it still is. And now the techno-toy people are adding in video. That's why alternatives like treating such behavior just like driving intoxicated are in order. It is in the interest of public safety.