But the use of cell phones in cars is now estimated to be involved in 26 percent of all motor vehicle crashes, according to a report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Surprisingly, it isn’t texting that causes the majority of crashes – it’s talking, with an estimated 5 percent of crashes involving tapping on keys or reading messages from others, while 21 percent involved drivers gabbing, even hands-free…

“What we’ve been studying for the last three or four years is the explosion to technology in the vehicle — hundreds of buttons, touch screens, gesture controls, heads-up displays, voice commands,” according to the author of the study, David Strayer, a professor of cognition and neural science at the University of Utah. “Our concern is that in many cases the driver will assume that if it’s put in the vehicle, and it’s enabled to be used while the vehicle’s in motion, then it must be safe. That’s just simply not true.”
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