There are other options short of an outright ban. Drivers can always use a hands-free set up to talk on the phone, but the latest innovations are not always available to them. Siemens just released a product in Europe that lets drivers accept and initiate phone calls with their voices, eliminating fumbling with the phones. However, the kit isn't available in the United States because, unlike Europe, there are different technical standards to transmit radio signals. The news just doesn't ring well here with the myriad legislators aching to pass bans on the use of cell phones while driving.
Ring tones are a lucrative market today.
Downloading ring tones onto phones has become a new music genre in Europe and Japan where musicians now release their art in video, cassette, CD, MP3 file and ring tone. When Nylon Beat, Finland's homegrown version of the Spice Girls, plays a song at its rock concerts, fans by the hundreds hold up their phones and ring along with the singers. The ring tones have created mini karoake bars everywhere, where people will sometimes clap and break into song when a popular tune echoes from a cell phone. After NTT DoCoMo, Japan's head honcho carrier, pushed back its 3G services to October, it looked like the British Isle of Man would become the first in the world to offer the much-awaited services that will include streaming video on phones. That's not happening either.