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It seemed kind of obvious to me but when all the country did away with handheld cell phones in the car being legal and only allowing hands-free ones, that it really didn't make much of a difference. Hands-free?  That's brain-free. It's not the holding the phone that's the problem.  It's the thinking while you're on the phone. Who hasn't been distracted by a phone call (or, God forbid, a text) when driving?  I have all I can do just to keep my mind on my driving, as that's the time I free float and often get ideas for stories.  No way can I talk and drive at the same time. My husband, on the other hand, does it all the time (and has been ticketed in NYC).  He doesn't believe in laws (or medicine, but that's another story), and so he continues to get tickets for not wearing a seat belt, talking on his handheld phone and other expensive habits he really should discontinue. But getting back to the phone, a new study says the hands-free ones

So everyone thought all we had to do to make driving while talking on a cell phone safer was to remove our hands.  Big joke. It's our minds that we have to remove when we're doing that.  I always wondered why the big deal about hands-free cell phones when it's the talking that's distracting, not the damn holding of the phone.  And it appears it's not limited to calls, but sending texts with Apple Siri or Google Now smart phone personal assistants.  Even just speaking into your phone to give a command slices our attention in half. Now a study has finally found that it takes up to 27 seconds to regain full attention after issuing voice commands, according to newswise.com.  University of Utah researchers discovered this in a pair of new studies for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. I mean, it makes sense.  When I'm talking to someone -- whether in person or on a cell -- I'm totally in the conversation.  I don't notice if a car is about to side