explain why talking on a cell phone while driving is illegal in many places.?

Because ~80% of the population is barely competent enough to turn a car on, let alone drive without distractions.

Where I grew up it used to be illegal to do ANYTHING with your hands other than driving the car while you were driving the car, except those things specifically mentioned: adjusting the controls of the vehicle, or talking on a CB radio -- which was only added because of certain lobbying by certain groups.

Now you have so many distracting gadgets, it's a wonder more people aren't involved in fatalities every day: the phone, the stereo system, the "menu system" to adjust the a/c, the GPS, not to mention other people in the car constantly yapping at the driver.

Turn it off. I don't want to be the firefighter getting run over at an accident scene on some dark highway because you couldn't wait to tweet a photo to your bff.

You need to focus on driving not talking on the cell phone.

Unless it is an emergency,the phone call can wait. It is called voice mail on your cell phone.

It only take the one second you take your eyes off of the road that you hit someone and kill the other people inside the car, yourself, hit a pedestrian , or someone riding a bike, in the bike lane.

Three years ago I was driving on a busy street under construction. A kid who was talking on his cellphone came barreling through a stop sign from a side street and ran into my car causing $3000 worth of damage. Believe it or not but about 20 years ago a woman with a van of young children came barreling through that very same stop sign - she ended up in the yard of a house opposite the street she was driving on. She was on the car phone. Fortunately no one was hurt but I had to lay on the brakes hard and my nephew who was in the car with me almost hit the dashboard.

That's why.

In 2011, 23% of all vehicle accidents involved cell phones.

Because studies have shown the people on the phone drive as bad as people that are legally drunk. They even demonstrated this on Mythbusters. With this in mind the law should treat both acts as a serious criminal offense.

http://www.psblaw.com/2012/08/24/mythbusters-prove...

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/myth...

Because many of us have encountered the zeros whose driving endangers us all when they are talking on a phone.

It stops focus on the road and could lead to a crash. If holding the phone it can restrict a hand.

Distractions.

The cause of most auto accidents is distracted driving.