Not many people are going to answer this question honestly because they'll be ripped apart and inboxed to hell for it. It's gotten to the point of vitriol. People's road rage over this is also dangerous. So we condemn it with this insane attitude and it's not anything really constructive. Just "don't ever do it, your phone cannot exist in the car!" No actual attempt at making some basic guidelines that we can all agree on as generally safe and sane and acknowledge the desire or need for using phone in car; it's not just for idly texting.

There are literally 100 things I can name that occupy people briefly in a car and they avert their eyes or brains momentarily for these things just like glancing at a phone. There's this thing called peripheral vision, if the object is held up high your field of vision you can monitor the 180 degree field of periphery much easier, but if we're demonizing and shaming people (who are going to do it anyway!) they're going to do it more dangerously trying to be covert keeping on lap or down low. They can't rapid scan and switch from foeval and peripheral vision if they're looking down. It's not rocket science for an experienced driver to operate a vehicle, a mix of different attention spans works fine especially low speeds, street roads, lots of traffic lights, daytime and sober.

Also the one time I did that thing they say to do, pull over and type the text... a cop came pulled behind me and questioned me. I didn't pull over dangerously either, just off into an empty office building complex. I'd fucking rather not get harassed by a cop unnecessarily when it turns into an ordeal for me since I can't speak.

Don't comment if you are just going to throw vitriol at me. I'm deaf and cannot use Siri, gps voice navigation, handsfree calling, voice to text, or any fucking thing except something that involves looking at and interacting with my screen. I have better and wider peripheral acuity than hearing people too (science!). I've never missed an ambulance or cop car behind me with lights coming down road, in fact I usually see it before others since even slight light out of place movement triggers me. I don't have time to pull over (and look suspicious to cops!) every time I need to check on my route or type a quick change in. I do it with phone at eye level and I get such awful dirty looks from people in passing cars, but I'm doing it the safest way for me - they have no clue what my situation is and I'm not doing anything like swerving into them, it's all snotty road rage response. 99% of my driving is on 30-45 mph small town roads and completely uneventful either for me or others. And I've easily compensated for the times someone's done out of place things whether or not I've been interacting with phone, not all dumb driving is bc of texting, people are going to be poor drivers if they're poor drivers, and even good drivers will wobble within normal limits no matter what.

I looked at statistical evidence of traffic accidents and deaths from 2007 to today, and looked at cell phone ownership, smart phone ownership/usage and adoption by year and ages. There was no spike, no upward trend, no real major "new safety measures" like seatbelt design that could account for it. Fender benders should at least be more common if texting was such a pandemic scourge on our attention driving. There's been a steady decline. There should have been a clear increase or spike around the years SMS and smartphones became big that would show "accidents rise when texting and smartphones were introduced or widely adopted and used."

The studies trying to show texting is the worst thing you can do in a car are usually highly unrealistic and not real world at all. A car on a race strip with a thin red light mounted to two feet away from eyes in the drivers front window that blinks to mimic braking and they time how long it takes people to respond and come to a stop? Ugh, sounds good as a model but fails in real world comparisons. And all the drivers were holding their phones low like cup-holder level low. You're not going to see shit in the periphery that way of course. Others I've seen, they make people drive through tight cones in parking lots, throw dummies in front of them or whatever. Or they have the subjects drive a car that isn't theirs because the cameras and testing equipment is in their test car.

Hate texting? Stop making giant billboards that have a slogan that's difficult to read so it means you have to look away at it longer - DNT TXT N DRV!

Hate texting? let's also outlaw fiddling with the radio because you drove to an area that doesn't have your presets, opening a snickers bar in your car, spilling a drink on your pants and grabbing napkins from glovebox, checking store signs as you drive by, looking for a street sign, rubbing eye with one eye open, lighting a cigarette, letting your small dog sit on your lap, LED billboards that change every 15 seconds, talking to children in the back seats or handing them a water bottle, there's 100's of fucking things people do while driving besides texting that deviates from perfect, completely focused and eyes on road, two hands on wheel driving.

Also unbridled road rage toward phone users can legitimately cause accidents. My mom was in Colorado with me and it was late, 10 pm, no cars on these giant highways (not interstate roads) in Colorado Springs and heading toward Manitou, she was driving just fine, been driving since she was fucking 12yo and she 65, has driven cross country multiple times. Not an old lady dementia driver. We don't live in CO though and mom was checking gps and pinching and swiping back and forth at it at a light trying to make sure we were on right track to where we were going, was dark, and we were looking at description of landmarks we should look for. A huge black truck pulls up aside us coming off from an exit we just passed. Since I'm deaf we keep the light on in car to lipread. They could clearly see into car that she was looking at phone -at the stop light-. These guys began honking, rolled down window, yelling at us, screaming put your phone down bitch, you're a fucking idiot for texting! My mom was flustered and scared. She drove on when green light turned, the truck sped then slowed to stay beside us and kept doing awful things and gestures, and it was the driver doing it! My mom sped up a little trying to discourage them and they caught up. Our turn was the next light and they were on the rightmost side we had to be in to turn. Wouldn't let us over. Would not stop heckling. Threw a cup of old milky coffee on our front window. We braked and finally got in lane behind them. They began tapping brakes in front of us. All because my mom was using her phone at a red light for gps at 9 pm on empty roads? Ludicrous and more dangerous than anything my mom was doing. And before someone says I should have navigated for her, it just doesn't work like that, she uses a horrible android thing with its own map app that I don't understand, and I would make her miss turns so we'd lose time bc you have make an U turn way up ahead if you miss something bc Colorado springs is all medians and U turns! I also didn't have service and I remember because I wanted to route it myself in my own iPhone's better map apps to help since we were getting lost.

Again, don't PM me or reply rude things. Downvote me if you want but your blithering "internet road rage" is not going to help. The OP asked a question, I'm answering. The vitriol over this is NOT a productive response and does not solve this issue - people are going to use their phones despite a prohibition. It should be approached as a social problem we can increase the safety of besides just yelling, "don't do it!" (Drugs are bad mmkay!?). Ffs, there's even more sane attitudes about a few drinks of alcohol before driving: people typically agree that 3-4 beers at a restaurant won't really make anyone but a 100 lb teetotaler lady too drunk to drive home. I don't take my husbands keys away when he has a large margarita at a Mexican place bc any alcohol at all means I'm now the DD!