Are you serious? One of the overwhelming causes of accidents you read about in the paper is from some moron tuning the radio and not paying attention to what the hell they are doing. My good friend was hit and seriously injured from one of these tuners who ran a red light and T-boned my friend's truck. I can't imagine anyone disputing that the radio is a dangerous distraction.
That said... we can't go about, banning everything that is a distraction unless we want to make driving an incrediblely unpleasant experience. I think its one of those kinds of risks we just have to put up with if we want a decent quality of life. Just be more careful, don't give the other guy the opportunity to involve you in his accident.
And, before banning anything, the unintended consequences should be studied to find out what negative outcomes would occur from the ban. Cars with no radios cannot know, for example, that they are running straight toward a tornado, a fact that I learned from the radio a few years ago, nor can they know where all the backups on the freeway are locally. The boredom from having no entertainment in the car might cause people to daydream and maybe go to sleep at the wheel, esp. late at night. There's too much rushing to ban things without considering the side effects of it - ban cell phones in cars, lotsa people (esp. me) would no longer have any use for the thing. (Don't need it at home, it doesn't work inside the mall, can't use it in the theater where I spend a lot of the time that I am not at home, don't use it on the floor of the gym I belong to - I can't think of anywhere I'd make much use of it other than in the car. Things are so far apart here that most of the time I spend away from the house is either at work, or driving, and I have a phone at work.) With less cell phones in society, the reporting of accidents and criminal activity might suffer, causing more harm than good overall.
Study the consequences before banning things, that's all.
Dave Head
