Part I
Texting while driving seems like one of those issues that shouldn't require a law, whether it's at the federal, state or local level. It's just a bad idea to text while driving.

But laws are required, and a lot of proposals are being debated, whether it's a punitive approach by withholding states' highway money until they pass statewide bans or a more incentive-based approach by awarding other, non-highway federal funds to states that do. Either way, there's money attached.

This goes against the ideal of local sovereignty, but a nationwide ban on texting while driving would solve a lot of problems. For one, it would eliminate any confusion for drivers who cross state lines. For another, it would negate the need to award federal funds to states.

Of course, enforcement remains a problem. Driving home that point are TMZ's photos of Maria Shriver talking and holding a cell phone while driving. Shriver's husband, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, last year signed into law a ban on using a handheld device while driving in that state.

When the threat of a fine (or camera) isn't enough to get drivers to put down the device, there's education. Pretty much everyone agrees that laws only go so far, and education is a big piece of the puzzle. So, instead of rewarding states with federal funds, maybe the feds could use that money for more educational programs.

Part II
I recently talked with a cognitive research scientist, Dr. Shlomo Breznitz, about the topic of distracted driving. It was an eye-opening, if not a little unsettling, conversation. I don't think anyone is suggesting people stop talking – period – while driving, but it made me think twice about bringing up any kind of serious talk when I'm a passenger.

According to Breznitz, founder and president of CogniFit, the brain isn't very good at multitasking – a situation that many of us know first-hand. He says if someone is having a phone conversation in a car, the audio portion will get precedence over the video "channel," so to speak.

The reason is quite obvious, he says: Auditory information is always sequential. "If you listen to a sentence, it's a sequence of sounds. If I miss half or some, I miss the meaning of the sentence." But visual information is spatial. "If I blink my eye several times ... I would find the world pretty much the same as before I blinked, but we cannot do the same with our ears."

In fact, Breznitz says talking is actually better than listening because the speaker knows what he or she is going to say. Listening to a "dull" conversation, or one in which the listener can predict what's coming, isn't as distracting as an "interesting" conversation in which the listener can't anticipate what's coming.

Several years ago, I had a conversation (while parked at a desk) with someone who argued that the conversation you have in a car is what's distracting – it's not really the handset. That may be true, but I'm not one to advocate getting rid of hands-free devices.

What about when the driver holds a conversation with a passenger in a car? Breznitz says the advantage is the driver has the ability to visually signal, as in "just a second, I'm in a critical situation," which is more difficult when on a phone. A passenger in the car, assuming they're paying attention, would get the cue.

Some of this sounds very rudimentary when you consider the types of connections that car makers are considering for the car – or already rolling out. Navigation systems, either through voice commands or video, would seem distracting, but they also can be better than a piece of paper with scribbled or type-written directions. Tech companies, including wireless, have been working for years on sensors and warning systems so a driver might be alerted when approaching a red light or getting too close to another vehicle.

At the end of his two-day summit on distracted driving earlier this month, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a series of actions the Obama Administration and his department are taking to help put an end to distracted driving. LaHood pledged to continue the department's research on how to best combat distracted driving. It sounds like the type of research that could go on for a long, long time.

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