PEOPLE who use their cellphone while driving often claim it is no worse than chatting to someone sitting in the passenger seat. Suzanne McEvoy has news for them: it’s twice as bad.
Two years ago, McEvoy and her colleagues at the George Institute for International Health in Sydney, Australia, revealed that drivers using a phone are four times as likely to have a crash that puts them in hospital as someone who is not, even if the phone is a hands-free model (New Scientist, 16 July 2005, p 4). The finding drew flak from those who said that talking…
