...and you are just as distracted and dangerous as if you were holding the phone beside your head with one hand and talking into it.

 

Just some friendly advice, if you live in a Province/state that requires a Front Licence plate, best to have it affixed as required. Otherwise you are just increasing LE's attention to your vehicle at least some of the time. Day in day out.
I live in BC and we have to have front plates, our neighbour Province Alberta does not, I certainly notice when the odd car I see does not have a front plate, usually because they are from Alberta.

 

Again....all that happened was I took the device out of my pocket and was placing it down. This was solely opportunistic since I was at a crawl/stopped and the cop was on the curb. Nothing to do with this safety/distraction BS.
It would have been another story altogether if I was moving in traffic on the other lane.

 

You may have a good argument if your car has blue tooth and can prove that there was no need for a hand held device.

 

Sorry Don, but no. I work in the industry and using hands-free voice command in your vehicle, while more distracting than being alone and silently focused on the task of driving, is nowhere near as distracting and dangerous as holding a device to your head and talking.
In my company vehicle there are no buttons away from the steering wheel that I need to push while driving, everything from audio functions, phone, text, email, navigation, concierge assistance (who will look up and remote program the Nav) to adjusting the temperature can be done completely by voice command. The level of distraction is on par with having a casual conversation with your passenger.
If you never talk or listen to your passengers, then you must be a more advanced human than 99.9% of the population.

 

My wife says I don't listen to her but I can't remember, too busy driving

 

My ex would tell you then that I am more advanced than 99.9% of the population.

 

Depends on what you consider an acceptable level of cognitive distraction while driving. You don't seem to grasp the concept of cognitive distraction at all.
Regardless of what industry you work in, using voice commands to operate vehicle functions, while admittedly similar to having a conversation with a passenger, is in no way comparable to listening to or dictating texts while driving in terms of the danger it presents due to distraction.
If you work in either the telecommunications or auto industry you really should already know this, as there are numerous studies and an abundance of data refuting your assertion.

Just for starters:
https://www.aaafoundation.org/measur...e-distractions

"The scale to the left ranks the six common
driver tasks according to the amount of
cognitive workload they impose on drivers.
The two anchor conditions (single-task nondistracted
driving, and the complex OSPAN
math and verbal task) represent the low (1)
and high (5) ends of the scale, respectively.
The other scores are standardized from the
three experiments, and demonstrate that
while some tasks, like listening to the radio,
are not very distracting, others – such as
maintaining phone conversations and
interacting with speech-to-text systems –
place a high cognitive demand on drivers
and degrade performance and brain activity
necessary for safe driving."

On this objective measurement scale of distraction, hand held cell phone 2.45, hands free cell phone 2.27, speech to text system 3.06. Single task driving 1.0.

 

I have these options as well, but is this legal? You still need to plug your password in and read your own texts before sending them.

Last week I told my wife I was going to Markham to pick up a pervert.

 

On a technicality front, there’s quite a bit of justifying the law of handhelds but very little of what's actually considered “distracting”. As a car guy, I rubberneck every time I see a rare/exotic car or a beautiful woman, or whatever is deemed distracting. And yet, I never got into an accident. Now the law will stipulate that because I was "Looking downward" in my car, I'm guilty of distraction. How’s that for a slap in da face!

 

You weren't going to Markham?

 

Not when you use the "Hey Siri" commands. You don't need to use Touch ID or your password to use this feature. I NEVER have to touch my phone or read texts on the device while driving. The and audio and visual alert pops up when a text is received in the car. To listen (can see them if the vehicle is in motion) I press the enter button on the steering wheel and the text is read to me. To reply (with an android) you can voice select pre-canned responses (i.e.: "driving can't text", "call me now", or anything you've previously created) to send or simply say "call back" to call the text sender.
With an iPhone it's more complicated as apple doesn't like anyone interface using text response; they want everyone to go CarPlay. So that's when you can use "Hey Siri" to respond or compose the texts, she always reads them back to you.

 

...and you are just as distracted and dangerous as if you were holding the phone beside your head with one hand and talking into it.

 

Yeah you have all the answers thanks to Google, I've only worked in the auto industry at the manufacturer level for the last 25 years and spend my days evaluating and testing new product and a fast evolving VR technology.

 

No. The earliest studies on distracted driving/ cell phone use and accident rates were published in the medical literature, which I read regularly. A paper on this was presented at my journal club nearly 15 years ago.
You may work in the auto industry, but I've spent years as a rural emergency room MD and have seen a lot of smashed people as a result of impaired and careless driving. You might say I'm on the receiving end of this issue while you work on the manufacturing end.
In any case, the source of the data doesn't change the facts. You have equated the risk level of using vehicle function voice commands (such as operating the A/C) with using a Bluetooth/iPhone system to read and dictate text messages while driving. That is clearly wrong, and I have provided an example of the data that proves it. The fact that you work in the auto VR industry and don't seem to acknowledge that a driver can have his eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel yet still be dangerously distracted is something I find very interesting.