Study after study for more than a decade has concluded that talking on a cell phone while driving is dangerous, even if the phone is hands-free. As the number of cell-phone users has grown, no state has enacted a ban on talking on both hands-free and handheld phones while behind the wheel. A new report by the National Safety Council should prompt legislatures across the country into taking action.

Six states and the District of Columbia now ban the use of handheld cell phones while driving, and 17 states and D.C. restrict or ban cell phone calls by novice drivers. Hawaii's Legislature has balked several times, and City Councilman Charles Djou is proposing to ban text messaging and playing video games while driving on Oahu.

Those laws are premised on the assumption that the distraction caused by use of the devices is physical. In fact, as studies have shown, the distraction is cognitive. “;It's not just what you're doing with your hands,”; says Janet Froetscher, the council's president and chief executive. “;It's that your head is in the conversation and so your eyes are not on the road.”;

Most drivers know as much by mere observation but seem to tolerate inattention by drivers as a new fact of modern-day life. Studies have kept track of the consequences:

» Eighty percent of traffic accidents are related to driver inattention, and the No. 1 source of driver inattention is cell phones, according to a 2001 study by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

» The annual cost of crashes caused by cell phone use is $43 billion, according to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.

» A study published 12 years ago in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the risk of a collision while using a cell phone quadrupled, about the same as for legal intoxication.

“;When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away,”; says Froetscher. “;It's time to take the cell phone away.”;

In September, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that bans motorists from sending, writing or reading messages on electronic devices. A California law that went into effect last July bans holding a cell phone while driving.

While Schwarzenegger says his state's law “;will keep drivers' hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road,”; he misses the point. An ideal law should result in the driver's mind - not just hands and eyes - concentrating on the road.