With recently approved hand-held cell phone bans taking effect in New Jersey and the District of Columbia on Thursday, July 1, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), the organization that represents state highway safety agencies, is reminding drivers that cell phones are not the only distractions they need to safely manage while driving. GHSA is also urging other states to refrain from passing hand-held cell phone legislation because the association believes these laws are not likely to have a significant safety benefit. Hands-free devices, while perhaps offering some added convenience to the driver, do not mitigate the intellectual distraction - the conversation. Drivers are similarly distracted when using either a hand-held or hands-free phone. In fact, hand-held cell phone bans send the wrong message to drivers and gives them a false sense of safety as it encourages them to drive while carrying on a conversation, albeit on a headset. Last summer, GHSA joined AAA and its Foundation for Traffic Safety in announcing research from the University of North Carolina showing that reading and writing, eating, adjusting the radio, interacting with others in the car, grooming, as well as cell phone use, were major distractions. Employing in-car video cameras to observe how drivers behave, the study concluded that all drivers in the study had been distracted to some degree, 90 percent by something outside the car and 100 percent by something inside the car. Kathryn Swanson, Chair of GHSA, says, "The AAA research reaffirms that cell phones are the distraction that drivers love to hate, but in fact they are just one of many that drivers encounter on a daily basis. Anything that takes a driver's attention away from the task at hand can be potentially fatal, especially distractions that require a cognitive element."  Swanson continues, "Driving is a complex task and full attention to the matter at hand is needed to reduce the chance of error. The best advice is for drivers to limit these distractions as much as possible: pull over to a safe location to eat, set your radio station/CD player before you start driving and do not use a cell phone, either hand-held or hands-free, while driving." GHSA discourages drivers from using cell phones while driving and advocates educating drivers about how to manage distractions in the vehicle.  Swanson says, "Good highway safety policy must be based on sound research and clear evidence of the extent of problem. While the AAA study is an important step in the right direction, we do not know how serious the distracted driver problem is particularly as it relates to cell phones." One of the main reasons GHSA does not support the banning of hand-held cell phone use by motorists is a lack of relevant crash data. To address this need, GHSA and the Department of Transportation have jointly developed model data elements that include cell phone use and other distractions for police officers to use while investigating a crash. Currently, only 14 states list distractions on their crash forms, but GHSA is hopeful that number will increase as states revise these forms. "States typically update their crash forms about every five years, so I think we'll start to see more of them include places for distraction information. We realize that distractions will be underreported since drivers are not likely to offer that they were engaging in behavior such as cell phone use, but we do think it will give us at least a better picture as to the extent of the problem than we have now," Swanson said. GHSA is urging the federal government to fund additional research on the issue and to evaluate the hand-held cell phone ban in New York State. New York banned hand-held use while driving in 2001 and a state study on the law's impact is due by December of 2005.