Voice-Operated Texting While Driving: As Unsafe As It Ever Was

With the new year a new law went into effect in California that lets drivers send and receive text messages or emails so long as they communicate through a hands-free or voice-operated system. Dictating an outgoing message or listening to an incoming one while behind the wheel is now fair game. When the bill first passed its author, then-Assemblyman Jeff Miller of Orange County, said it allowed Californians to text and drive "safely and responsibly."

The evidence from behavioral science begs to differ. Years of work by psychologists, most notably David Strayer of the University of Utah, has demonstrated that people suffer significant impairment when they use a cell phone while driving. But the public's desire to do both things at once is so great that many are willing to overlook the evidence. A last-ditch plea by the National Safety Council for California to repeal the law — citing the "overwhelming amount of research" questioning the safety of hands-free technology — fell on deaf Bluetooths.