The car in the fast lane in front of you on I-15 fluctuates between 50 and 80 miles per hour, swerving in and out of two lanes.
No, the driver isn't drunk.
They're talking on their cell phone.
This would be what the National Transportation Safety Board might consider a distracted driver.
Distracted drivers respond up to 1.5 seconds later to a hazard on the road, according to an NTSB report presented on Tuesday.
The NTSB also asked Tuesday that all states prohibit inexperienced drivers from using cell phones while driving.
The board said they didn't know enough about cell phone distraction to recommend a ban for all drivers, just the inexperienced ones.
Study after study has been done on the impact driving while talking on the phone has on a driver's attention span.
The question is, why has no one done a study on people who drive while chomping down a Whopper, or the lady in the lane next to you who is putting on her mascara?
Is the mere act of talking while driving the culprit or is the person holding the phone handicapped without the use of one hand?
It seems that research groups are quick to blame cell phones for accidents by distracted drivers.
According to a study from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, drivers gabbing on their cellular phones are responsible for 6 percent of U.S. auto accidents each year; equaling 2,600 people and injuring 330,000 others.
Yes, the people who caused those accidents were talking on their phones.
But the problem isn't the cell phones. The problem is the drivers.
Guns get blamed for thousands of deaths every year. But everyone knows that the gun would be useless without a person behind the gun pulling the trigger.
So, why should bad driving be blamed on cell phones?
There are people who think they can read while speeding along the white dotted lines, who watch the DVD playing in their mini-vans, who turn around to talk to the person sitting in their back seat.
People who are distracted while talking on the phone do cause a safety hazard.
So do others who aren't paying attention to the road.
New Jersey and Maine have already passed laws prohibiting drivers using learning permits from using cell phones or other wireless devices while driving. The NTSB says it wants the rest of the states to adopt similar laws.
'We think that inexperienced drivers should do nothing more than concentrate on the driving task,' Joseph Osterman, director of the National Transportation Safety Board Board's Office of Highway Safety.
While these laws could prove helpful, the question is how far will lawmakers go until they draw the line?
Some people can't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. Some people can't drive and talk on the cell phone at the same time.
But don't penalize those who are capable of doing two things at once just because some people don't have the ability to multi-task.