If you must talk on a hands-free phone while driving:
Make sure it is a hands-free phone that is set up and working before you start driving.
Keep the conversation short. Don't engage in complex or emotional conversations.
Tell the person on the other end that you are driving and may have to end the call.
Never text message (SMS) while driving.
End the call if it is distracting you from driving.
Remember, if you don't have proper control of your vehicle because you are talking on a hands-free mobile phone you are guilty of an offence.No mobile phone use by learner and P1 provisional drivers and riders
From 1 July 2007, learner and provisional drivers and riders must not use a mobile phone while driving or riding.
This includes phones in the hands-free mode or with loud speaker operating, sending or receiving SMS messages, playing games or any other function on your phone.
The penalty for mobile phone use is three demerit points (or four if the offence occurs in a school zone) and a fine.
Learner and P1 drivers and provisional riders are developing their vehicle control, hazard perception skills. Mobile phone use can distract the novice drivers and riders from the driving task. Studies have found that using a mobile phone while driving is dangerous as it slows reaction times and interferes with a driver’s perception skills and increases the chance of having a crash.
So switch your phone off.
The study documented how mobile phone use alone reduces 37% of brain activity engaged in driving. This was done using brain imaging. During the study, drivers on a simulator while on the phone were found to zigzag out of their lanes.The findings also suggest that making mobile phones hands-free or voice activated for that matter is not really enough to do away with distractions.
“Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road,” said researcher Marcel Just.
Talking on a cell phone has a special social demand, and not interacting with the caller can be interpreted as rude or insulting behavior, he added.
The 29 volunteers for the study used a driving simulator inside an (MRI) brain scanner. They steered a car along a virtual winding road either while they were undisturbed or while they were deciding whether a sentence they heard was true or false.
Just’s team used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in 20,000 brain locations, each about the size of a peppercorn. Measurements were recoded every second.
The listening-and-driving mode produced a 37 percent decrease in activity of the brain’s parietal lobe, which is associated with driving.
