I drove an electric vehicle, and here is my impression

[pbrower2a]

I never thought that I would get to drive such a car, but I can start by telling you the circumstances. One of my tires had a blow-out while I was driving 70 on a rural Interstate. I had to drive to a safe place to park, call a tow truck, call my insurance company, and get a ride back home. This I thought might be my only chance to experience such a car. I am not going to give the manufacturer or make, so I will not be spamming.  There are obvious eccentricities by the conventions of the vehicles that I have known, and one of those is that there is no real car key. The key fob starts the car by a something resembling a remote control. This could work on gas buggies, too, and I might expect that innovation to become the norm on the last such cars to be built. This said, the big questions are how it handles.

First, the electric car is much quieter. On the gas-powered car one can often get some idea of one's speed from the road engine noise. Road noise remains, but engine noise is practically nil. Be careful; it is easy to speed in such a car or to drive too slow for freeway conditions. Until you get accustomed to the car, avoid the cruise control because the car operates differently. The ride is smoother because of fewer vibrations.

Now for a practical consideration: if you are prone to make very long trips in one day -- let us say from Detroit-area suburbs to the area with this bridge





or from southern California to the area around this bridge



you will not get to do so on one full charge. I doubt that I would want to drive the car across country (or even halfway across) unless going two hundred miles in a day, which defeats one purpose of the private vehicle. Charging takes time -- more than literally fueling up. If you are spending less on fuel but more on motel stays you defeat one of the purposes of a private auto.

[Eric the Green]

(03-10-2022, 04:40 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I never thought that I would get to drive such a car, but I can start by telling you the circumstances. One of my tires had a blow-out while I was driving 70 on a rural Interstate. I had to drive to a safe place to park, call a tow truck, call my insurance company, and get a ride back home. This I thought might be my only chance to experience such a car. I am not going to give the manufacturer or make, so I will not be spamming.  There are obvious eccentricities by the conventions of the vehicles that I have known, and one of those is that there is no real car key. The key fob starts the car by a something resembling a remote control. This could work on gas buggies, too, and I might expect that innovation to become the norm on the last such cars to be built. This said, the big questions are how it handles.

First, the electric car is much quieter. On the gas-powered car one can often get some idea of one's speed from the road engine noise. Road noise remains, but engine noise is practically nil. Be careful; it is easy to speed in such a car or to drive too slow for freeway conditions. Until you get accustomed to the car, avoid the cruise control because the car operates differently. The ride is smoother because of fewer vibrations.

Now for a practical consideration: if you are prone to make very long trips in one day -- let us say from Detroit-area suburbs to the area with this bridge





or from southern California to the area around this bridge



you will not get to do so on one full charge. I doubt that I would want to drive the car across country (or even halfway across) unless going two hundred miles in a day, which defeats one purpose of the private vehicle. Charging takes time -- more than literally fueling up. If you are spending less on fuel but more on motel stays you defeat one of the purposes of a private auto.

I don't think recharging takes so much time that it makes extra motel stays necessary. But I hope electric car recharging will get faster and distances travelled on a charge longer. There are already differences depending on the car make.

If we really want to convert to electric cars, subsidies should be offered to poorer people so they can buy them. I don't see much future for gasoline-powered cars. Other kinds of renewable-energy cars may be invented or further developed, but electric cars have the momentum right now.

[David Horn]

(03-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't think recharging takes so much time that it makes extra motel stays necessary. But I hope electric car recharging will get faster and distances travelled on a charge longer. There are already differences depending on the car make.

If we really want to convert to electric cars, subsidies should be offered to poorer people so they can buy them. I don't see much future for gasoline-powered cars. Other kinds of renewable-energy cars may be invented or further developed, but electric cars have the momentum right now.

We still have a battery problem, and newer technology needs to solve that. Getting enough lithium to make batteries is already a challenge, and the energy density, good as it is, still inadequate to uses like aircraft and ships -- both huge users of fossil fuels.

[Eric the Green]

(03-11-2022, 11:12 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't think recharging takes so much time that it makes extra motel stays necessary. But I hope electric car recharging will get faster and distances travelled on a charge longer. There are already differences depending on the car make.

If we really want to convert to electric cars, subsidies should be offered to poorer people so they can buy them. I don't see much future for gasoline-powered cars. Other kinds of renewable-energy cars may be invented or further developed, but electric cars have the momentum right now.

We still have a battery problem, and newer technology needs to solve that.  Getting enough lithium to make batteries is already a challenge, and the energy density, good as it is, still inadequate to uses like aircraft and ships -- both huge users of fossil fuels.

Yes. Much conversion can be done, but there's that 10% or more that will take longer. Bringing more trade closer to home, such as Americans making and buying American, will help create less reliance on these greedy shipping companies.

[pbrower2a]

I can easily imagine Corporate America... and tax authorities... adjusting. At some point, when electric cars become commonplace the states will need to tax energy used by a consumer in his car (generally a good proxy for wear-and-tear on roads), impose shadow tolls for miles used (which would be the same for a dirt road as for a high-cost expressway), raise registration fees (or link those to miles used) as a substitute for highway taxes.

With government services of any kind one pays one way or the other. I might find a way in which to avoid a dollar-per-mile toll, but I wouldn't dodge three cents per mile (which is roughly the gas tax per mile in Michigan). How the states and municipalities exact taxes is ideally a wash.

I can imagine businesses now selling gasoline to sell electric power. Businesses either adjust to novel technology and consumer trends or die. (Most gas stations in America are also convenience stores that nearly break even on motor fuels but make their money off snacks, sodas, beer, cancerettes, etc. Restaurants could offer "Eat here and recharge your car here" as you recharge the battery outside while dining inside. So could hotels and motels. Convenience is precious for anyone who has no desire to waste time.

Lithium is of course recyclable... is there a viable and cheap substitute, like calcium metal? Calcium is about as reactive as lithium, but it is also heavier. It is also far cheaper than lithium.

[beechnut79]

(03-11-2022, 11:38 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I can easily imagine Corporate America... and tax authorities... adjusting. At some point, when electric cars become commonplace the states will need to tax energy used by a consumer in his car (generally a good proxy for wear-and-tear on roads), impose shadow tolls for miles used (which would be the same for a dirt road as for a high-cost expressway), raise registration fees (or link those to miles used) as a substitute for highway taxes.

With government services of any kind one pays one way or the other. I might find a way in which to avoid a dollar-per-mile toll, but I wouldn't dodge three cents per mile (which is roughly the gas tax per mile in Michigan). How the states and municipalities exact taxes is ideally a wash.

I can imagine businesses now selling gasoline to sell electric power. Businesses either adjust to novel technology and consumer trends or die. (Most gas stations in America are also convenience stores that nearly break even on motor fuels but make their money off snacks, sodas, beer, cancerettes, etc. Restaurants could offer "Eat here and recharge your car here" as you recharge the battery outside while dining inside. So could hotels and motels. Convenience is precious for anyone who has no desire to waste time.

Lithium is of course recyclable... is there a viable and cheap substitute, like calcium metal? Calcium is about as reactive as lithium, but it is also heavier. It is also far cheaper than lithium.

Paragraph by paragraph response:

P1:  I believe there is much here that remains to be seen. Sooner or later the gasoline engine is bound to go the way of the rotary telephone, but those of us who are now seniors may not be around long enough to see it. One poster here not too long ago stated that the car culture needs to go if we are to ever get serious about global warming. But will it? I for one highly doubt it. It has been nearly half a century since we had our best shot at it, during that dreadful gas shortage when interest in expanding mass transit briefly surged.

P2:  In Illinois where I am at, our tollways were supposed to become freeways once the original bonds were paid off. Never happened.

P3:  The first sentence is a hard lesson Sears had to learn. Their last store in Illinois closed late last year before the holiday shopping season took hold. Middle sentence is that the gas station attendant has also gone the way of the rotary telephone everywhere except New Jersey and Oregon. Spent a few years in the former and they only pump gas and don't check oil levels and clean windshield ala your attendants of the past. Last sentence is something we must sacrifice a little bit if we are ever to get serious about climate change. At least since the end of WWII, each generation has demanded more convenience than the previous one enjoyed, most recent example being the explosion in food delivery.

P4:  Will need to pass here because it's something I really don't know anything about.

[pbrower2a]

(04-09-2022, 03:16 PM)lines beechnut79 Wrote:

(03-11-2022, 11:38 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I can easily imagine Corporate America... and tax authorities... adjusting. At some point, when electric cars become commonplace the states will need to tax energy used by a consumer in his car (generally a good proxy for wear-and-tear on roads), impose shadow tolls for miles used (which would be the same for a dirt road as for a high-cost expressway), raise registration fees (or link those to miles used) as a substitute for highway taxes.

With government services of any kind one pays one way or the other. I might find a way in which to avoid a dollar-per-mile toll, but I wouldn't dodge three cents per mile (which is roughly the gas tax per mile in Michigan). How the states and municipalities exact taxes is ideally a wash.

I can imagine businesses now selling gasoline to sell electric power. Businesses either adjust to novel technology and consumer trends or die. (Most gas stations in America are also convenience stores that nearly break even on motor fuels but make their money off snacks, sodas, beer, cancerettes, etc. Restaurants could offer "Eat here and recharge your car here" as you recharge the battery outside while dining inside. So could hotels and motels. Convenience is precious for anyone who has no desire to waste time.

Lithium is of course recyclable... is there a viable and cheap substitute, like calcium metal? Calcium is about as reactive as lithium, but it is also heavier. It is also far cheaper than lithium.

Paragraph by paragraph response:

P1:  I believe there is much here that remains to be seen. Sooner or later the gasoline engine is bound to go the way of the rotary telephone, but those of us who are now seniors may not be around long enough to see it. One poster here not too long ago stated that the car culture needs to go if we are to ever get serious about global warming. But will it? I for one highly doubt it. It has been nearly half a century since we had our best shot at it, during that dreadful gas shortage when interest in expanding mass transit briefly surged.

Technologies vanish for many reasons.  Some were never so great to begin with (eight-track audio tapes); some fall because an alternative is less expensive in cost or space or being fussy to operate (mainframe computers). Some fall because they require a vanishing input or one costlier than something available. Gasoline was an unwelcome byproduct until it proved ideal for the engines of the new automobiles. When gasoline becomes fiendishly expensive we will find an alternative.

Quote:P2:  In Illinois where I am at, our tollways were supposed to become freeways once the original bonds were paid off. Never happened.

Here's what happened: the Illinois Tollway system began with three tollways: the Tri-State and the Northwest Tollways along the routes that they now follow and the eastern-most section  of the East-West Tollway , then extended only to Aurora back in the 1950's. These tollways originally had modest tolls that, had no costs other than maintenance been done upon them, would have been paid off  The Kentucky Parkway system, similarly financed, had its tolls removed in the 1990's at the latest. The tollway authority was able to raise more bonded debt to be paid off with tolls. The Illinois Tollway Authority became a bureaucracy in its own right, and as the pattern for high-level bureaucrats of all kinds, the executive salaries soared. There will be incentives to keep expanding the system, as new segments are being built. Well-paid bureaucrats have good cause to protect their presonal gravy trains -- and they are clever in doing so.

So if Michigan is to build toll roads, then I suggest the way that Kentucky went, building tolled roads whose financing self-liquidates them. Of course, Kentucky built its tolled parkways strictly in rural areas where third and fourth lanes were likely to never be needed.

Quote:P-3:  The first sentence is a hard lesson Sears had to learn. Their last store in Illinois closed late last year before the holiday shopping season took hold. Middle sentence is that the gas station attendant has also gone the way of the rotary telephone everywhere except New Jersey and Oregon. Spent a few years in the former and they only pump gas and don't check oil levels and clean windshield ala your attendants of the past. Last sentence is something we must sacrifice a little bit if we are ever to get serious about climate change. At least since the end of WWII, each generation has demanded more convenience than the previous one enjoyed, most recent example being the explosion in food delivery.

Sears originated as the analogue to Amazon in its day, relying heavily on a catalogue for mail order. Then it went to building stores to offer merchandise to people who for whatever reason wanted to see the merchandise for themselves or were too impatient to rely upon mail order. Eventually the stores overtook the mail-order volume, possible because people generally wanted the same stuff. After the Second World War, when the greatly-expanded middle class, especially in the suburbs (with super-cheap housing), were flush with cash, Sears was one of the big players in the new shopping malls. By the 1980's America had a New Poor of young adults who, if they went to the mall went there to work for near-minimum wage pay.

The customer base shrank, and most of the employees did not stick around long enough to become problem-solvers. Sears typically owned the land on which its stores sat, so top management saw no problem because the company could ignore the implicit value of its properties as a cost. (Basically, if the stores were underperforming they should have sold them off to someone else who could better use the property. Somewhat later, many defunct store sites might become apartments or medical clinics. Economists call that opportunity cost). Sears had control of Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances which accounted for much of Sears' revenue. Other than that, Sears did badly in just about everything else -- like clothing, housewares, electronic entertainments, and furniture.

As I have suggested in a thread relating  to the life-cycle of business, Sears ended up with bureaucratic bloat as its viability faded. Bureaucrats do not generate revenue or create marketable; in the end they are good only at feathering their nests. Generally recognizing that they had no viable careers elsewhere, such executives as could took golden parachutes that devoured assets. When operating costs overtake revenues, the company might as well shut its doors. Merging with K-Mart might have seemed a good at the time, but this is basically the marriage of two patients with terminal cancer. (I would have suggested that Sears close its mall stores, move its Kenmore and Craftsman brands to K-Mart and shore up the clothing line.

Of course I would have done this much earlier, figuring that revenue from the sale of still-valuable real estate might allow a revival of "S-Mart Stores". As it is, Sears Holdings is in possession of retail stores that may never have another customer and empty parking lots. But that would also require that someone like me stick to a career in retailing. Hunger is an unwelcome companion to any career, especially one that offers no reliable career ladder.

Quote:P4:  Will need to pass here because it's something I really don't know anything about.

I know little about the chemistry of batteries, either. I cannot think of a suitable alternative to lithium in batteries. Sodium is too dangerous, and magnesium isn't reactive enough.

[pbrower2a]

(03-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(03-10-2022, 04:40 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I never thought that I would get to drive such a car, but I can start by telling you the circumstances. One of my tires had a blow-out while I was driving 70 on a rural Interstate. I had to drive to a safe place to park, call a tow truck, call my insurance company, and get a ride back home. This I thought might be my only chance to experience such a car. I am not going to give the manufacturer or make, so I will not be spamming.  There are obvious eccentricities by the conventions of the vehicles that I have known, and one of those is that there is no real car key. The key fob starts the car by a something resembling a remote control. This could work on gas buggies, too, and I might expect that innovation to become the norm on the last such cars to be built. This said, the big questions are how it handles.

First, the electric car is much quieter. On the gas-powered car one can often get some idea of one's speed from the road engine noise. Road noise remains, but engine noise is practically nil. Be careful; it is easy to speed in such a car or to drive too slow for freeway conditions. Until you get accustomed to the car, avoid the cruise control because the car operates differently. The ride is smoother because of fewer vibrations.

Now for a practical consideration: if you are prone to make very long trips in one day -- let us say from Detroit-area suburbs to the area with this bridge





or from southern California to the area around this bridge



you will not get to do so on one full charge. I doubt that I would want to drive the car across country (or even halfway across) unless going two hundred miles in a day, which defeats one purpose of the private vehicle. Charging takes time -- more than literally fueling up. If you are spending less on fuel but more on motel stays you defeat one of the purposes of a private auto.

I don't think recharging takes so much time that it makes extra motel stays necessary. But I hope electric car recharging will get faster and distances travelled on a charge longer. There are already differences depending on the car make.

If we really want to convert to electric cars, subsidies should be offered to poorer people so they can buy them. I don't see much future for gasoline-powered cars. Other kinds of renewable-energy cars may be invented or further developed, but electric cars have the momentum right now.

I'm tempted to believe that the next time that we have a nasty downturn we will have a parallel to "Cash for Clunkers", this time with the expectation that people turn in their old "gas buggies" for a highly-subsidized purchase of an electric vehicle. Not another gas buggy!

So far, electric cars seem to get no smaller than SUV's, and a tendency is to build bigger vehicles (such as pick-ups) with electric motors. "Cash for clunkers" was intended to get people out of old gas-guzzling vehicles and into smaller cars. Of course many of the cars turned in were cars with a couple of wheels in the vehicle graveyard, so to speak, but the purposes were to reduce gas consumption and revive the troubled auto industry. 

The bugs will go... and ideally, charging will be faster.

[pbrower2a]

Hyundai is apparently making small electric sedans.

[pbrower2a]

(03-11-2022, 11:12 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-11-2022, 06:26 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't think recharging takes so much time that it makes extra motel stays necessary. But I hope electric car recharging will get faster and distances travelled on a charge longer. There are already differences depending on the car make.

If we really want to convert to electric cars, subsidies should be offered to poorer people so they can buy them. I don't see much future for gasoline-powered cars. Other kinds of renewable-energy cars may be invented or further developed, but electric cars have the momentum right now.

We still have a battery problem, and newer technology needs to solve that.  Getting enough lithium to make batteries is already a challenge, and the energy density, good as it is, still inadequate to uses like aircraft and ships -- both huge users of fossil fuels.

We have legitimate questions about the durability of the batteries. How durable are they? Fewer moving parts sounds like a portent of longer survival. I expect some parts of a car (the drivetrain) to outlast some others (tires, most obviously). By the time that electric vehicles fully supplant gas buggies, most cars will be self-driving (and that could be the cause of mass replacement of older cars.  The insurance companies will price you out of doing most driving on your own.

[David Horn]

(07-03-2022, 07:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Hyundai is apparently making small electric sedans.

With the 2030 mandate from Califonia (and similar mandates from China), electirc is where the R&D money is focusing and what the future is expecting.  I'm hoping to live long enough to see electric be so common place that gas-guzzlers will be seen as the oddities.

[pbrower2a]

(09-09-2022, 09:54 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-03-2022, 07:03 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Hyundai is apparently making small electric sedans.

With the 2030 mandate from California (and similar mandates from China), electirc is where the R&D money is focusing and what the future is expecting.  I'm hoping to live long enough to see electric be so common place that gas-guzzlers will be seen as the oddities.

Just as gas buggies supplanted horse-and-buggy travel due to cost (Henry Ford made his Model T Ford so that farmers could use it and even modify it into a tractor), so will electric vehicles supplant gas buggies of 120 years later.  As significant will be "self-driven" cars (or nearly so. Someone will have to take responsibility for being awake and sober while driving in case of a computer glitch).  The combination will revolutionize travel about as much as gas buggies supplanting horses. 

It is worth remembering that the halcyon days for American farmers were in the mid-1910's, when much of the agricultural activity was the production of oats to fuel equine-based transportation. As motor fuels supplanted oats and cars supplanted horses, agricultural prices collapsed worldwide and contributed to the economic instability that culminated in the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, with its own effects including the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Between World War I and the retirement of horses from transportation and drafting of farm implements, the time around 1920 was a nightmare for horses.  

Unexpected consequences happen. Just think of what happens to the petroleum industry and political entities and investors and workers who depend upon it.

[David Horn]

(09-09-2022, 02:46 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Unexpected consequences happen. Just think of what happens to the petroleum industry and political entities and investors and workers who depend upon it.

The fossil fuel industry, especially the petroleum side of it, has been given subsidies, special privileges and, now, ouright governement sanctions (see Texas under Gov. Abbott) since the very beginning.  It's death should not be mourned nor subsidized furthere.  Enough is enough!

[pbrower2a]

(09-10-2022, 10:16 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-09-2022, 02:46 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Unexpected consequences happen. Just think of what happens to the petroleum industry and political entities and investors and workers who depend upon it.

The fossil fuel industry, especially the petroleum side of it, has been given subsidies, special privileges and, now, outright government sanctions (see Texas under Gov. Abbott) since the very beginning.  Its death should not be mourned nor subsidized further.  Enough is enough!

One consequence of the automobile was that outlaws such as the Dillinger and Barrow-Parker gangs could exploit the fragmented system of law enforcement in which crooks might behave themselves in one state and do their crimes in another and return to the comparative safe harbor. The legal technicality that interstate flight to evade prosecution was a federal offense was largely ignored until J Edgar Hoover chose to make the FBI its main enforcer. With this the FBI could hound such crooks. "Interstate flight to avoid prosecution" was the ground for arrest, and the FBI turned the crook over to an offended State. The FBI then typically dropped the "interstate flight" charge in favor of more serious crimes as murder, armed robbery, or rape that might lead to the electric chair or gas chamber. 

......

What will happen with the demise of fossil fuel? Cities that depend heavily upon fossil fuel for income will become contemporary equivalents of Detroit and Flint today and of New England mill towns about a century ago. $hit happens in economics. Much tax revenue comes from fossil fuels as fuel and asphalt. That will be gone.

The car culture that includes racing and modifying old cars (hot rods) will marginalize. Electric cars are quiet, so they do not offer the 'sound of speed'. To be sure, cars manufactured since about 1980 have been incredibly bland. I can't imagine any car culture souping up Honda Accords from the early 1980's or transforming them into "low riders".  After all, motor fuels will be hard to come by around 2045. 

Ultimately it is the private automobile that must go, except in rural areas. Maybe we will rely upon vehicles more like golf carts (complete with low speeds) than like sedans. The "road trip" will largely disappear because the motorized carts will not fit them. Our perverse patterns of land use will themselves change. Broad highways and big parking lots will become decrepit before becoming put to new purposes. 

Technology, economics, and assumptions of human behavior are parts of generational change.  This applies even to land use, too much of which we have dedicated to private automobiles.





The infamous "stroad", a street that has rural speeds and heavy traffic and fosters box stores, fast-food eateries, movie cineplexes, rent-to-own rip-off emporia, payday loan places, motels, and convenience stores...  often with abutting apartment complexes that one needs a car for going anywhere else (like across the street to the box store). It is the compromise between masses of people and cars in which people need cars to avoid being struck and killed by cars traveling at 45 mph. It's the worst of both worlds. 

 

     

The stroad is a place where life is nasty and brutish, and if one is a pedestrian, potentially short. I would guess that these are places of poverty. You tell me whether you want to live near one of these urban nightmares or work in the low-paying jobs that flourish nearby. Can you imagine the contribution to obesity and diabetes, both contributors to shortened lives?

[pbrower2a]

Michigan has been cutting down some four-lane streets in small towns to three lanes, the middle lane strictly a left-turn lane. Speeds slow, but traffic flow apparently improves. Vehicle collisions are less frequent because people aren't using middle lanes both as passing lanes and left-turn lanes in which a speeding driver rear-ends someone stopped for a left turn.

Small-town interests are averse to having their towns bypassed because such might divert people from driving through and stopping at some shop or restaurant. In my experience I find that those highways that bypass that town as part of some superhighway bring more people into an area, and the communities with these bypasses still get people driving in to shops and restaurants. I can assure you that I have gotten off the largely freeway route to the Upper peninsula of Michigan into every significant town along the wayIf you want a road trip to not be boring, then you really must take a side0trip off the expressway on occasion.

Then again -- cut the four-lane path to town to three lanes, reduce vehicle-pedestrian accidents, and make it easier to get to your town.

[pbrower2a]

Now for the dark side of these vehicles: they are heavier, so their impacts are more severe. YouTube video, which exposes some hazards that "gas buggies" don't:





My comment on this video: 

I drove an electric SUV for a couple weeks, and one thing that I noticed was how quiet it was. That's great for listening to FM radio, but I wondered whether pedestrians or bicyclists would get a good warning of my presence. Ordinarily it takes two to make an accident except for fixed-object crashes. I got incredibly cautious.

In view of what you say about these super-heavy vehicles, it would be appropriate that they be driven much slower on any road not a full-blown freeway to not be menaces on the road. Doing more damage to the road they should face steep tolls (or taxes based on electricity consumption) based on weight instead of on axles. Where pedestrians might be, these vehicles need to make noises that warn people. Human instincts have adapted to gas buggies over a century or so, but electric vehicles are not the same nemesis to a pedestrian.  

As for texting -- people have done such things as fiddling with the radio and CD player, itself distracting. We all know about drinking and driving when the substance contains ethyl alcohol, but drinking (or eating) anything while driving is itself a distraction.

So -- leave your cell phone with your passenger or put it in the trunk, out of reach. Pull over to accept or make a cell-phone call.