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I am willing to incur wrath with this: We'll not, in the short term, be able to totally ban cell phone usage while driving; banning all but hands-free is the next-best thing.

I view driving while manipulating and talking on a cell phone just about on par with driving while intoxicated. More and more studies are backing this up. Even MythBusters agrees.

I'm in the thick of Houston commuter traffic for about two hours each day, and I can absolutely positively guarantee that 90% of the people driving unsafely are on a cell phone...pretty easy to spot since we have no hands-free law. Oh, and 7% more are simply aggressive idiots; 1% may actually be intoxicated; and 2% are, in all likelihood, certifiably clueless from birth.

I have a BlackBerry and a Bluetooth headset. I never use 'em while I'm driving. Never.

Clint Eastwood from The Outlaw Josey Wales: "A man's gotta know his limitations."

Elite professional athletes have an understanding of their reflex response and reaction time. The rest of us don't. We greatly overestimate our ability to respond. At just 60mph, you're covering 1,760 yards each minute...almost 18 football fields. If you take even one second to remove your eyes from the road and press a single button on your cell phone, your vehicle has traveled 88 feet...a 30-yard shot. You take your attention off the road for just four seconds, you've traveled well over the length of a football field. At 80mph, you've traveled 156 yards.

This is dangerous stuff: a massive vehicle moving at high speeds. When they're on the track at the Bondurant driving school, nobody is holding a cell phone, or eating in the car, or putting on make-up, or writing notes. Both hands are on the wheel and absolute attention is on the road. Zero distractions.

I'd really like to think that all the safety training we do in class and on the range in relation to firearms would carry over to the rest of our lives. People who carry concealed handguns would be, I'd think, far more aware of safety than the general population. This is the last group of people I'd think would talk on a cell phone while driving.

If you wouldn't pull a firearm's trigger while looking at the buttons on your cell phone, then don't drive and use your cell phone.