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To: slacker711 who wrote (173439)	8/30/2014 9:41:33 PM
From: Ryan Bartholomew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

I may have missed something new but the stuff I have read has indicated that this isnt true. Conversations with people in the car used different parts of the brain, and caused less distraction, than conversations with somebody not present. This was true whether you were using Bluetooth or not. AAA points out here: "AAA recently teamed up with experts at the University of Utah to conduct the most in-depth analysis to date of the impact of cognitive distractions on drivers’ performance. They found that some hands-free technologies, like voice-to-text email, can be far more dangerous than even handheld phone conversations. Unlike previous studies, they also found that conversations with passengers can be more distracting than those on the phone, but only if the passenger is kept unaware of what’s happening on the road." That last sentence refers to the finding that if the passenger is essentially helping you drive by watching the road and warning you (or stopping the conversation when danger presents), then what you said is true.. passenger conversations may be somewhat safer (albeit far from safe). But if they're not paying attention, then it's about the same. The bigger point was that one type of distraction will be substituted by another, to some degree, when the first one is banned or otherwise irrelevant. While many people will put on make-up, have a conversation with a passenger, have a conversation on their phone, text, fiddle with their radio, eat a sandwich, etc., not many will do all at once. Get rid of one and another likely comes into play. Of course, smartphone distraction is, by far, the leading cause of distracted crashes, but it's misleading to presume that's because it is the most dangerous form of distraction. It has merely become the most common. No one I know fiddles with a radio knob these days, but just 20 years ago, I'm sure that was a much more common cause of crashes than it is today. It hasn't become safer - it is just less common now. And as this relates to smartwatches and smartphones... I doubt that the relative use of one type or the other will ultimately make much difference in distracted driving, walking, etc.