Talking on a cell phone is as impairing as being legally drunk, or so psychologists at the University of Utah believe, after conducting a study.

“People are as impaired when they drive and talk on a cell phone as when they drive intoxicated at the legal blood-alcohol limit,” Frank Drews, a co-author of the University of Utah study, said. Drews and his colleagues also concluded from their study that drivers using a cell phone are four times more likely to get in an accident than those who are not.

This study is one of many being used to support a ban on teen cell phone use while driving. Senator Joseph Simitian of Palo Alto is working to expand on his bill that passed last year, Senate Bill 1613, which restricted cell phone use in the car to hands-free.

If passed, the senator’s new bill, Senate Bill 33, will ban drivers who are 18 and under from all cell phone use while driving. SB 33 was passed through the Assembly and Senate in late August and is now awaiting action by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. If he approves, SB 33 will take effect at the same time as SB 1613, which is July 1, 2008.

There was little opposition to either bill on the part of cell phone companies. This is no surprise since hands-free device sales aim to skyrocket in 2008. (Surely, many Sacramento State students will contribute to that.) Also, the largest block of cell phone owners – 18 and up – still haven’t been denied their ability to yakety-yak while driving.

Cell phone companies won’t oppose cell phone restriction laws as long as drivers are not targeted. Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokesperson for Sprint, told the San Jose Mercury News that Sprint supports cell restriction legislation so long as it doesn’t “unfairly single out the cell phone as a source of distraction.”

It’s good that Sprint will draw some line with regard to cell phone restrictions because without that muscle, it wouldn’t be long before a blanket ban was set.

If legislators were to begin a blanket ban on cell phone use, the only policy that would conceivably have some productive results, the mobile phone community would probably use the AAA-funded study by the University of North Carolina, in a defense against the ban.

The study showed that driver distraction was a factor in only 8 percent of accidents. Of that eight percent, only 1.5 percent of the distractions involved cell phones.

If legislators are worried about driver distractions, they aren’t making a big dent with the cell phone restrictions. Maybe there should be bills banning fast food, coffee, mascara, radios, mp3 players, smoking, billboards, gruesome car accidents and hot construction workers.

Maybe there should be a legal sleepiness limit. I feel a lot more like I’m drunk when I’m tired then I do on my cell phone. Where are the studies that show the accidents these distractions cause and their relation to legal drunkenness? There aren’t any.

The honest truth is it’s ridiculous for lawmakers to think they can save us from our own poor driving. There is always going to be a distraction. If it’s not a cell phone that is distracting drivers, it’s their makeup, the radio, their fast food or the coffee they just scorched themselves with.

We are a country with a lot of distractions and a lot of crappy drivers. Eliminating the distraction of a cell phone is not the way to go – maybe you can fight the cell phone, but you can’t fight all the distractions. Instead, the best way to combat accidents is to teach teens to be smart and focused drivers. That is a lesson more than a few adults I know could use.

Choquette Marrow can be reached at [email protected].