The National Safety Council is urging motorists to stop using cell phone and messaging devices while driving, and is calling on businesses to implement policies prohibiting it and governors and legislators in all 50 states to pass laws banning the behavior.

Drivers are far more distracted by talking on a mobile phone than by conversing with a passenger in an automobile, according to a new study by University of Utah psychologists Frank Drews, David Strayer and Monisha Pasupathi.

The study used a sophisticated driving simulator and found that when drivers talk on a cell phone, they drift out of their lanes, and miss exists more frequently than drivers talking with a passenger.

State legislators in Virginia want to ban driving while texting (DWT) on a cell phone.

Virginia’s General Assembly is proposing legislation that would prohibit texting while driving an electric wheelchair, riding a bicycle, motorcycle and a moped.

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and WPP all ponied up big bucks to gain advertising companies, as Tacoda’s Dave Morgan suggests a splintering online audience has driven this.

Eighty-nine percent of American adults believe that sending text messages or emails while driving is dangerous and should be banned according to a new survey commissioned by mobile messaging service Pinger and conducted by Harris Interactive.

Though retail sites get about a quarter of their traffic from search engines, they are also increasingly getting traffic from MySpace, perhaps answering some reservations posed about the efficacy of creating a presence in social networks.

People who frequently drive are more active online and savvy than the average consumer, according to Scarborough Research.

They found that the top 20 percent of U.S. adult drivers in terms of miles logged were 48 percent more likely than the average consumer to have spent $1,000 or more online in the past year. Seventeen percent were more likely to have broadband and 28 percent more likely to have spent 20 hours or more online weekly.

One might think the rise in US gas prices would spur people to race to the Web for pricing information and hybrid car details. One would be wrong to think these things.