Are Hands-Free Cell Phones Safer to Use than Regular Cell Phones? Hypotheses are often generated from everyday observations. Many people assume that hands-free devices are safe to use while driving, since they don’t require the driver to actually look at the phone or take their hands off the wheel to operate them. But are they? Several studies have found that talking on a hands-free cell phone was just as distracting as talking on a hand-held cell phone (Baumeister & others, 2011; Strayer & others, 2006). Hands-free or not, talking on a cell phone or operating speech-to-text devices while driving were much more distracting than listening to the radio, conversing with a passenger, or listening to music (Strayer & others, 2013). You’ll learn why in the discussion of multitasking in Chapter 4.

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