My latest article for TheFeature is about recent research into the effects of talking on your telephone while driving your car.

Impairments of judgment, perception and reaction time caused by driving and dialing are approximately equal to the impairments caused by drinking the legal limit of alcohol, researchers say. The problem seems to lie not in user interface design but in limitations of human perception and cognition: we can only multitask to a certain degree while hurtling down the highway before we make a bloody mess.