The most noteworthy part, perhaps: "The recommendation includes hands-free and hand-held phones and would go beyond what many states have done to curb texting while driving."
It sounds like they looked at the research instead of the not terribly well thought out state laws. E.g.:
This research examined the effects of hands-free cell phone conversations on simulated driving. The authors found that these conversations impaired driver's reactions to vehicles braking in front of them. The authors assessed whether this impairment could be attributed to a withdrawal of attention from the visual scene, yielding a form of inattention blindness.
Cell phone-induced failures of visual attention during simulated driving. Strayer, David L.; Drews, Frank A.; Johnston, William A. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol 9(1), Mar 2003, 23-32.
Summary: We used a high-fidelity driving simulator to compare the
performance of cell-phone drivers with drivers who were legally intoxicated
from ethanol. When drivers were conversing on either a hand-held or hands-free
cell-phone, their reactions were sluggish and they attempted to compensate by
driving slower and increasing the following distance from the vehicle
immediately in front of them. By contrast, when drivers were legally intoxicated
they exhibited a more aggressive driving style, following closer to the vehicle
immediately in front of them and applying more force while braking. When
controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, cell-phone drivers exhibited
greater impairment than intoxicated drivers.
Fatal Distraction? A comparison of the cell-phone driver and the drunk driver. David L. Strayer, Frank A. Drews, and Dennis J. Crouch. Proceedings of the Second International Driving Symposium on Human Factors in Driver Assessment, Training and Vehicle Design.
At least it's based on science, unlike what most states are doing with banning only handheld phones even though all the research says they're just as bad as hands-free.
Would they really ban most modern in-car audio systems? What would they do, force manufacturers to put in a GPS lockout so that the Bluetooth doesn't work while moving in a state that bans hands-free use?
