• drivers still have to dial numbers and look up information; in ban states, they have to do so secretly, hiding the phone in their lap, looking away from the road; in non-ban states, you are free to hold the phone up at eye level and keep traffic in your peripheral vision,
• in ban states, you can't tell if someone's talking on a cell phone; in general, drivers talking on the phone are paying less attention than those who aren't so I'd rather know who's talking on the phone and drive defensively around them, and
  
• in ban states, drivers who don't have the proper bluetooth equipment often have to deal with poor speaker quality, so they end up holding the phone halfway up to their ear, or trying to conceal it; they also spend more time with their eyes on their rear-view mirror looking for police; all this sneaky activity makes them far more dangerous than if they could just hold the phone up to their ear.

New data from the Highway Loss Data Institute finds that laws requiring hands-free devices for cell phones don't change accident rates.

You're a safe driver, right? You signal before changing lanes, never (gasp) text-and-drive, and always use a cyborg-chic hands-free device to talk on the phone. A model mobile citizen.

Here's a shocker: That Bluetooth appendage in your ear isn't doing anything to make you safer. This comes from the Highway Loss Data Institute, which studies such things. More precisely, its study found that crash rates in places with bans in place – California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington D.C. – stayed the same when those bans were implemented.

"The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk," said Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and HLDI president Adrian Lund in a press briefing.

The National Safety Council earlier this month found that one in four US car crashes involves cell phone distraction. At the start of this year, Illinois joined the list of states that have banned texting behind the wheel, but with these new findings, are such laws enough? Digital distraction behind the wheel has been called a safety epidemic – should bans go all the way and ban all in-car cell phone use?

Some of the study's data confused the researchers, such as a finding in New York that a decline in crashes had occurred, but that it started before a cell phone ban was implemented – and then leveled out afterward. "Whatever the reason," Lund said, "the key finding is that crashes aren’t going down where hand-held phone use has been banned. This finding doesn’t auger well for any safety payoff from all the new laws that ban phone use and texting while driving."

On this study, PC World's Brennon Slattery reminds:

As always, studies need to be taken with two whopping fistfuls of salt. Notice that this particular study only looked at 100 cars -- hardly enough to gather substantial data leading beyond a flimsy hypothesis. And, for you conspiracy theory types, it's worth reiterating that this study was funded by insurance companies, suits that profit off this kind of stuff.

The institute's full report is available here.