JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – One of the heads of the National Transportation Safety Board is calling for a ban on the use of all personal electronic devices while driving.
Since 2003, the NTSB said it's found distraction from portable electronic devices as a cause or contributing factor in crashes that resulted in 259 people injured and 50 people killed.
AAA researched distracting driving in 2013. The Auto Club found talking on a phone "hands-free" can be just as distracting for drivers as holding a phone up to their ear.
"People think that it's safer and it really isn't," AAA spokesman Bill Bishop said. "It's not the physical act of holding the phone that is distracting. It's the cognitive, the mental of not paying attention to traffic and everything else."
Drivers agree distracted driving is a problem but think it would be hard to regulate getting rid of all hands-free devices.
"I think it's very much of a distraction but I think it's unrealistic to think they are going to get rid of it today," Diane Tafuri said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports thousands of deaths on American roadways each year. According to NHTSA, drivers engaging in visual-manual tasks, such as dialing or texting, triple their risk of a crash.
Other NTSB recommendations include lowering the illegal blood-alcohol level for drunk driving from 0.08 to 0.05 and studying the effects of other drugs on driving.