Can smart phones increase reduce driver distraction?

Phones and cars don't mix, right? I mean, everyone knows that handholding a phone while driving is distracting, dangerous, and just plain dumb.

But what if your phone could warn you of potentially dangerous traffic conditions? What if it could emit an alert when your driving behavior suggests you are distracted?

For Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics, those aren't academic questions. He believes that the smart phone is "rapidly becoming a platform for delivering safety systems into vehicles."

For this reason, Roger argues that government agencies should avoid the temptation to ban all use of mobile phones in cars. Otherwise, they will deny drivers the very real "distraction mitigating" capabilities of smart phones. To read Roger's blog on this issue, click here.