Proposed laws to ban cell- phone use while driving should be approached with great deliberation and care, if only because driving while talking on the car phone identifies you as a moron and a public menace, and I do it regularly. As an advocate of healthy behavior I try to regard this simply as a personal conundrum. My children regard it simply as hypocrisy, but what do they really know?

The Maine Legislature is tackling the issue of car-phone use in this legislative session. Many of our legislators have car phones they use while driving, a fact which will fortunately prevent objectivity from intruding on the legislative debate. Two bills before the Legislature would bar anything but hands-free car-phone use. Both are well- intentioned, but both would still allow car-phone conversation, an activity that has the same effect on drivers as several beers.

The simple fact is that most of us can walk and chew gum at the same time but cannot safely drive and chew the fat by phone simultaneously, whether the phone is hand-held or hands-free. It is the conversation that is distracting, not just the relatively simple tasks of holding the phone or punching in the numbers. While dialing, for example, I never take my eye off the road for more than, oh, several seconds.

While talking I am always dividing my attention between the cellular conversation and the oncoming snowplow. I would like to think that the only time I am distracted by conversation on the car phone is while discussing the philosophical intricacies of Sigmund Freud (rare conversation) or President Bush (short conversation). The simple task of ordering pizza distracts from driver attention; the smartest among us cannot make the difficult decision about whether we want extra cheese without being distracted.

Tempting as it may be to leave the whole issue to driver smarts, driver smarts is, at least on this issue, a contradiction in terms. If it truly existed, there would be no debate. There also would not be 100,000 car-phone users in the state of Maine, and frequent news reports of car crashes in which the last words heard on the other end of the car phone were “Holy -!” followed by a loud bang. I once nearly rear-ended my boss’ car while talking on my car phone, and still have not learned my lesson.

Opponents of the proposed laws point to the fact that there are lots of things that drivers do which distract them from their driving, most of which are not specifically outlawed. I once saw one of the smartest physicians I know drive through an intersection while reading what looked to be some office mail. At that moment he clearly had moose droppings for brains, but there are no bills before the Legislature this year to specifically prevent doctors from reading while driving. There are people out there who drive while eating bacon-wrapped cheeseburgers and listening to Rush Limbaugh, acts which are collectively legal because there is no statute preventing us from driving while brain-dead.

Cell-phone use while driving, however, is an easily identified activity that has been shown to be as risky as driving while intoxicated. A nation truly dedicated to safe driving and control of health care costs would ban car-phone use while driving in less time than it takes to speed-dial the Psychic Hotline. We are not really that dedicated to those concepts, however. We are also more likely to litigate individual remedies for those occasions when one person’s freedom to be stupid infringes on another’s freedom to be healthy than we are to legislate collective remedies to prevent such occasions. Our history is that we are reluctant to make stupidity illegal when doing so infringes on our freedom, so both bills in Augusta seem likely to go down in defeat amidst a chorus of lofty chatter about driver responsibility and the difficulty of legislating common sense.

If car-phone use is not to be banned by the Maine Legislature this session perhaps the Legislature could pass these laws:

? when you drive while talking on the car phone a big sign on the roof of your car lights up saying “WATCH OUT! Using car phone and am currently driving with IQ of Atlantic salmon” (which is probably unfair to Atlantic salmon);

? increases in the health and car insurance premiums of car-phone owners to help pay the added cost of the crashes and injuries they are more likely to cause;

? doctors who write columns like this and talk on their car phones while driving would be jailed for flagrant hypocrisy.

If all of this gave you a headache, take two aspirin and call me in the morning, but not on my car phone. I will be using it a lot less often.

Erik Steele, D.O. is the administrator for emergency services at Eastern Maine Medical Center and is on the staff for emergency department coverage at six hospitals in the Bangor Daily News coverage area.