Just how dangerous is using the phone whilst driving?

Well, according to estimates by the US ‘National Safety Council’, more than 100,000 crashes per year, which is around 2 percent of the total number of crashes in the USA, involve texting drivers.

Another 21 percent, totaling 1.2 million crashes, involve drivers distracted by their cell phones.

Driving while using a cell phone requires the brain to multitask, a process that both researchers into safer driving and designers of military helicopters have found it cannot do efficiently.

Even with hands-free kit, when taking a call drivers focus their attention on the phone conversation instead of the road. They’ve been shown to “look at” but not “see” up to 50 percent of the driving environment, missing critical information such as stop signs, red lights and pedestrians.

It’s worth bearing in mind that if you’ve got an in-helmet system to answer your phone, you’re likely to be just as much as a hazard as the car driver on the phone whilst you’re taking the call!

The best advice is always pull up and take the call at the side of the road. And if you can’t pull up, let the ansaphone handle it.