Dead Man's Curve Cell phones can turn any road into a Jan & Dean song.

Cell phones: You love their convenience and that you can makecalls in roadside emergencies, but not their constantinterruptions-or the danger to drivers. And there are dangers.It's difficult to tell how many accidents involve driversdistracted by cell phones, because states are only now beginning tokeep track. However, a 1997 study by Donald Redelmeier and RobertTibshirani, published in the New England Journal ofMedicine, reported that the risk of a collision increasesfourfold if a driver is using a cell phone. That's about thesame risk as for drunk driving. And according to the study,hands-free cell phones don't seem to help much because, in themajority of cases, it's the conversation itself that seems todistract the driver, not the process of dialing. Another majorfactor is responding to an incoming call, responsible for 42percent of cell-phone-related car crashes, according to a 1996study by the Japanese National Police Academy.

The risk of accidents has prompted Australia, England, Germany,Japan and nine other nations to ban the use of handheld cell phonesby drivers. In the United States, a handful of communities haveinstituted such bans, and numerous cities and states areconsidering them. Proposed legislation in this area is meetingstiff resistance, however, from the cellular communicationsindustry, which contends that using a cell phone while driving isno more distracting than eating a hamburger, tuning the radio ortending a child. Cell-phone users are likewise resistant to givingup the convenience. Although a 1997 study by the Insurance ResearchCouncil found that 84 percent of cell-phone users believe using aphone while driving is a distraction and will increase thelikelihood of a car accident, 61 percent of those same phone userssay they still use their phones at least sometimes while driving,and 30 percent say they phone and drive frequently.