Auto-insurance researchers: 'Cell phone bans don't help reduce crashes'

All those fancy in-car docks and voice navigation? Utterly pointless. At least according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who reckons that it's not the phone that's the issue, but "the full spectrum of things that distract." The IIHS (funded by a group of car insurers) compared crash data between states that had instituted cell phone bans and those that hadn't. According to its research, while the ban had reduced phone use (whoa, really?), it hadn't helped reduce crash rates. The National Transportation Safety Board has presented several studies linking cell phone use to an increased chance of crashing and their latest proposals would ban most hands-free systems found in major car makers' vehicles today. Hear that? That was the sound of hundreds of third-party accessory manufacturers recoiling in horror.