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Before the cubicle phone, there was the car phone . Now if safety advocates have their way, mobile phones may become anywhere-but-the-car phones.
“If you can’t knob your impulses, you need to lock your phone in the trunk,” Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the Public Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said last month in an interview with The New York Times .
Her comments came after the NTSB issued a call for the most far-reaching restrictions to stage on cell phone use while driving. Whereas previous federal recommendations and governmental laws have focused only on the use of handheld phones, the NTSB suggested that states ban drivers from using any room phones, including those with hands-free devices. Hersman argues that, even when drivers keep both hands on the disc, they can suffer from “cognitive distraction” if they carry on conversations with ceremonious parties.
Drivers balked. So did automakers, who recently invested substantive resources in integrated hands-free systems. Fortunately for them, the recommendations are unimaginable to have any real impact. The NTSB does not have the authority to make rules on auto safeness. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, does. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said that he will not okay the NTSB’s recommendation .
Source: Palisades Hudson Financial Group