I will not be citing any scholarly studies in this Diary, because I'm not aware of any that are based on gathering observations for over 100,000 miles a year since the advent of portable phones. I have watched, with interest, since "portable phones" came in bags with shoulder straps and weighed ten pounds, and were rare as virgin dancers in Las Vegas.
You, or a family member, are more likely to be injured or killed by a driver talking on a cell phone than a drunk driver!!
An individual driver on the phone is slightly less dangerous than a drunk, but in the aggregate they are far worse because they vastly outnumber drunks, particularly during the daytime. Their contribution to motor vehicle accidents is grossly under-reported and under-appreciated because, unlike drunks, there's a cellphone in damned-near every car and truck on the road, so it's usually not even worthy of note.
Drivers with a cell phone stuck to their head are, like drunks, blissfully unaware of their surroundings. In polite company I call them "cell-zombies"; most of the time I more accurately call them stupid motherfuckers. If you are observant they are usually fairly easy to recognize. They invariably stay glued in whatever lane they happen to start out in, even when a lane change would be appropriate or safer, to the extent of never noticing an emergency vehicle behind them with flashing lights (until they bump the siren). Generally, their speed will gradually decrease, because like everything else they aren't paying attention to their speedometer.
Drivers on cell phones, when they finally DO realize they must change lanes, are far less likely than the average driver to signal the change or visually clear the lane they are moving into, and, since they frequently fail to keep track of where they are geographically, are more likely than most to cross several lanes at once, having run past their exit while getting caught up on what Suzy is cooking for dinner. They are more likely to run red lights because they don't notice them, and will invariably be the last to react to visible road hazards ahead.
I understand that in today's world it is almost unavoidable that even the most responsible driver will get/make fairly important calls while driving, but it is fairly easy to minimize the chances that doing so will contribute to your hurting or killing someone. First, if the call cannot be cut short within about a minute, get off the road. If the call requires that you give or receive detailed instructions or write anything longer than a phone number down, get off the road.
While you are actually on the phone you have to consciously and aggressively compensate for the deficiencies celling causes, by forcing yourself to remain hyper-aware of your surroundings and keeping your eyes moving, constantly, from the road in front to your mirrors to your instruments (as you should anyway).
And for the Love of Corn, if you have a teenager who drives (that you want to keep around) find some way to get across to them that there is no way that somebody who is, at best, marginally safe to drive on dry roads in broad daylight can pull it off when their feeble little addled mind is absorbed with what they are texting or talking about.
The most dangerous car on the road is NOT the 1978 Cutlass Supreme with lots of Bondo and a 40-year-old drunk at the wheel; it's a Pontiac Sunbird with 4 or 5 teenaged girls in it, most or all of whom are on the phone.
[Update] My original Title was changed to protect, hell, I don't know who it was supposed to protect. I know about the "rule" about Diary Titles but don't now, and won't in the future, consider "goddamit" to be particularly obscene or worthy of censoring.