Should Distracted Cycling Be Banned?

By now, most American states have some law in place against distracted driving, but those rules are reserved for a moving motor vehicle. Laws against distracted cycling have failed to break through at the state level. A few individual cities have established rules against riding a bike and using a cell phone (without a hands-free device), but such regulations are far from sweeping.

Whether you're for or against distracted cycling rules — more on that in a moment — you can't deny that using a cell phone changes the way a person rides a bike. If logic alone doesn't convince you, there's plenty of empirical evidence to do so. The foremost research team on the subject comes from the psychology department of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.