Scientists in the US have shown that listening to a cell phone while driving was enough distraction to cause drivers to make the same type of driving errors as they would under the influence of alcohol.
The study is the work of neuroscientist Dr Marcel Just and colleagues at the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is to be published shortly in the journal Brain Research.
Even if you are not talking, just listening to a cell phone conversation can significantly reduce the amount of brain activity associated with driving, said the researchers, who asked volunteers to drive on a simulator while they observed their brains using an MRI (magnetic resonance image) scanner.
Using cell phones while driving has been a matter of controversy for some time, but this is the first study to look at listening alone as a distraction.
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