The group might be interested in reading this article....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._young_drivers


Talking on a cell phone makes you drive like a retiree - even if
you're only a teen, a new study shows. A report from the University of
Utah says when motorists between 18 and 25 talk on cell phones, they
drive like elderly people - moving and reacting more slowly and
increasing their risk of accidents.

"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone,
his reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver," said David
Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author
of the study. "It's like instant aging."

And it doesn't matter whether the phone is hand-held or handsfree, he
said. Any activity requiring a driver to "actively be part of a
conversation" likely will impair driving abilities, Strayer said.

In fact, motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than
drunken drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding 0.08, Strayer and
colleague Frank Drews, an assistant professor of psychology, found
during research conducted in 2003.

Their new study appears in this winter's issue of Human Factors, the
quarterly journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Strayer said they found that when 18- to-25-year-olds were placed in a
driving simulator and talked on a cellular phone, they reacted to brake
lights from a car in front of them as slowly as 65- to 74-year-olds who
were not using a cell phone.

In the simulator, each participant drove four 10-mile freeway trips
lasting about 10 minutes each, talking on a cell phone with a research
assistant during half the trip and driving without talking the other
half. Only handsfree phones - considered safer - were used.

The study found that drivers who talked on cell phones were 18 percent
slower in braking and took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they
lost when they braked.

The numbers, which come down to milliseconds, might not seem like much,
but it could be the difference to stopping in time to avoid hitting a
child in the street, Strayer said.

The new research questions the effectiveness of cell phone usage laws
in states such as New York and New Jersey, which only ban the use of
hand-held cell phones while driving. It's not so much the handling of a
phone, Strayer said, but the fact that having a conversation is a
mental process that can drain concentration.

The only silver lining to the new research is that elderly drivers
using a cell phone aren't any more of a hazard to themselves and others
than young drivers. Previous research suggested older drivers may face
what Strayer described as a "triple whammy."

"We thought they would be really messed up because not only are they
slower overall due to age, there's also a difficulty dividing
attention," Strayer said.

But the study found that more experience and a tendency to take fewer
risks helped negate any additional danger.