Is anybody watching the road? Many teens ignore laws against cell phone use while driving. But they aren’t the only ones chatting it up in the car-and researchers say all that talk time is slowing traffic and lengthening your commute. If you’re wasting more time in traffic, you’re probably wasting gas. So isn’t that enough of a reason to hang up the phone?

Laws banning cell phone use apparently aren’t enough to get drivers to change their ways. That’s the not-so-surprising result of a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety on the effectiveness of a cell phone ban for teen drivers in North Carolina.

North Carolina’s cell phone ban for drivers younger than 18 is part of the state’s graduated licensing system. Just before the law took effect in late 2006, researchers said about 11 percent of teen drivers were using cell phones as they left school in the afternoon.

About five months after the ban took effect, almost 12 percent of teen drivers were using cell phones as they left school, they found. Nine percent were holding phones to their ears, while less than one percent were using hands-free devices. About two percent were seen dialing or texting.

Both teens and parents agree the ban is hard to enforce. Police rarely look for cell phone violators, they said-and 71 percent of teens and 60 percent of parents described enforcement as rare or nonexistent. Only 22 percent of teen and 13 percent of parents surveyed think police enforce the law often or a lot.

According to research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, teens complain about other drivers who do stupid things while talking on their cell phones. But they don’t rate talking on the phone themselves as potentially risky behavior.

In reality, all motorists using cell phones are known to drive like drunks, but their overall effect on traffic flow was uncertain. But new computer simulations show chatty drivers, using regular cell phones or even hands-free devices, take longer to complete their trips because they drive more slowly on highways and pass sluggish drivers less frequently.

“At the end of the day, the average person’s commute is longer because of that person who is on the cell phone right in front of them,” said Dave Strayer, a University of Utah psychologist and leader of the research team.

“If you talk on the phone while you’re driving, it’s going to take you longer to get from point A to point B, and it’s going to slow down everybody else on the road,” said Joel Cooper, a University of Utah psychology doctoral student who assisted with the study.

Want to know the law on driving with a cell phone in your state? Check the list here.

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