So what are the best actions for drivers and lawmakers to take to minimize the carnage from use of cell phone calls, texts and tweets on the highways?   A research firm reported that one in 10 Twitter users admits they have tweeted while they were behind the wheel. And 29 percent of the interviewees said they’ve used Twitter from a car at some point in the past. Yikes.

And a separate insurance company study found that one in five cell phone users sent text messages while driving.

Yikes.  That’s a scary – considering a driver must look away from the road and tap out messages while he’s zooming down the road.

Several states  – including California  - have banned texting while driving, but most states have not.

The Obama administration is steping into the debate over electronic devices by considering whether to adopt a rule banning truck and bus drivers from talking on the cell phone while driving. Such a ban was recommended in 2004 by the National Safety Transportation Board after a case which a bus driver carrying students to Washington D.C. become so engrossed in a cell phone conversation that he failed to notice warning signs that an upcoming bridge was 2 feet lower than his vehicle height.

Eleven people were injured when the bus slammed into the underside of the bridge, peelng off the top of the bus like a can opener. 

At least, no one was killed then. In 2003, the The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimated that 2,300 people a year die in crashes related to cell phone use.

Congress is trying to get into the act. Legislation in the Senate would cut federal transportation money to states unless they banned texting while driving.

California requires that drivers making cell phone calls must use hands-free devices. You don’t have to look far to see violators, though.

As for me personally, I have found that a speaker attached to a car visor works best for me as a hands-free device. The visor-mounted device costs more than $100, but it’s hard to lose – unlike the ear piece sound devices.    

I don’t really like any cell phone stores. Walking in the front door runs the gamut from salespeople with their backs turned trying to get other people to sign away two years of their lives to a shark tank. They must work on commission, because even when I was looking at measly ear buds priced at $14.99, I was accosted by an extremely helpful sales associate.

“What kind of phone do you have?” she asked.

“Aren’t they pretty universal?” I asked, trying to sound innocent.

“Oh, no, they’re different for different models.”

She encouraged me to get my phone out, but I stubbornly insisted on doing this my way. It’s a man thing, like not asking for directions. Part of it was that if I feared being shunned if I showed them my Sprint phone, or at least they’d insist that none of their ear buds were compatible. I thought I knew better.

I had an idea of what I needed, so I said I was getting it for a friend and I didn’t know the model.

I retreated to my car and popped out the battery, forgetting that all I had to do was turn the phone off and on to see the model displayed on the screen.

I went back in to find that none of the ear buds for sale, certainly not the ones marked “$6.99,” were designated for Sanyo phones like mine. One model, the first one I looked at, seemed to have a plug that looked the right size, but I couldn’t be sure without swallowing my pride and pulling out my phone and trying it.

For a moment, I felt my pride had turned me foolish, but that moment soon passed when I read the package of the bud I’d been examining through its stiff transparent package.

I only realized later that this was a superior ear bud compared to my wispy black plastic one. It had a shiny metallic-looking earpiece and in-line mic. And such a line! Wire mesh that looked like you could tow your car with it. Or not.

The package said, “Treo 600.” My wife had a 650, and I remember our ear buds were interchangeable. On top of that, it showed the thing would fit several other types of phones, too. Almost, one might conclude, universal in the same way that English is the world’s universal language.

At that point, a sensible person would have popped open the reclosable package, made a phone call and ascertained that it worked with my interloping Sprint phone. As Yoda would say, stoop so low I would not.

To mitigate my possible error, it turns out the thing was actually on sale for $9.99.

On the way home, I called 511, my trusted digital friend that listens to me and judges not. So I might have a chance of returning the mismatched ear bud, I left the twist-tie on and held the phone close to my head.

“Oakland International Airport. Is that right?” the computer asked me.

“Yes!,” I said. “Oh, yes.”

I’m often petitioned by various public relations people anxious to get their firms a little ink, but alas, none of them have revived the old custom of clipping a $50 bill to the press release.

So most of these entreaties go unanswered. Like weeding spam from your e-mail, I can eliminate most of these without even opening them, even though I’m a curious person.

The more clever ones try to entice the reporter with some topical reference, as in, “our company’s products will stop global warming in its tracks,” or, “as Hillary Clinton recently said…” This week I received a true winner from Jennifer Rounds, director of corporate communications for Peter R. Thom & Associates.

The topic was driver distractions, and her Orinda-based company investigates accidents for insurance companies, public defenders and parties to vehicle manufacturer liability lawsuits:

That July 1, 2008, deadline outlawing the use of handheld devices while driving is approaching.  You’ve probably even written about the pluses and minuses of various hands-free models, but is the new legislation all that there is to the story of driver distraction?  No.  Not by a long shot.

Yes, there’s more and it’s not going away July 1, either. The nice thing about Jennifer’s pitch is that it went right along with my own ongoing rant on this subject.

As she says in her release, “even seasoned drivers are distracted by many more inputs than cell phone conversations,” and I couldn’t agree more.

Accepting her invitation, I spoke to Greg Quan, managing engineer for the company. He started out investigating accidents in the field, and I asked him if he was surprised to find about a tenth of his investigations involving no apparent cause other than the driver’s gaze or mind was not on the road.

“Common sense tells you that you should be paying attention when you’re driving,” he told me. “At the same time, I drive to work every day and I see people not paying attention.”

And with all the fuss over cell phones and the law authored by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, its surprising to see the data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute that rank-ordered driver distractions.

When police investigate accidents, the 2006 study says, they find that distractions contribute to about 25 to 30 percent of vehicle crashes:

Unfortunately, this statistic is based upon police accident reports that were completed at the scene of crashes. The investigating police officer would only mark distraction or inattention if the driver admitted guilt or an eyewitness observed that the driver was inattentive.

“Yes, officer, I was distracted. I was going for the wasabi and BAM!”

Clearly, researchers understand that most people aren’t that forthcoming, Sam Waterston notwithstanding.

So the guys at Virginia Tech used not one, but five video cameras (I’m guessing they were small) along with sensors to record the every wince and giggle leading up to accidents and near-accidents for 109 vehicles over a year or more.

What they found was that 80 percent of the mishaps their drivers got into were in some way related to a distraction within three seconds of impact.

And here’s another thing: Of those, only 1.5 percent of the crashes involved drivers chatting on mobile phones.

The biggest category, at 25.6 percent, was external distractions, like seeing something on the side of the road or maybe another car doing something odd. Only 1.7 percent involved eating or drinking, which really shocked me, a regular behind-the-wheel diner.

 Like so many laws, the one that starts on Tuesday is a reaction to a trend that happens to worry a lot of people. Will it save lives and property? I think so. In addition to giving people an extra hand to drive with for a few extra minutes each day, I think it will make people think a little more about how they comport themselves behind the wheel.