Swedish law against cell phones in the car.

To be quite honest I'm surprise we do not have a clear cut law against this already. Especially considering we usually outlaw things like these before the Americans do and there are already five states in the USA that have clear laws that prohibits you from speaking on a handheld cell phone while driving. In Denmark, Finland and Norway (our neighbouring countries) there already are laws against using a handheld cell phone while driving and in Great Britain you can even get prison time for using a cell phone in the car.

In Sweden we are even taking a more serious look at fiddling with other devices in the car, as the radio and a GPS device. There is no plan to outlaw these devices from the car but there is a plan to punish people harsher if they cause an accident because they have been tuning in a new radio station or are trying to plot a new route on the GPS. I have to say that I think that is good, personally I don't even change CDs while driving. It's easy to just pull over for two minutes if I need to do something that take my attention away from driving and then get back on the road. If you are in such a hurry that you can't do that then don't listen to music, talk on the phone or plot the GPS course before you leave.

If you now Swedish there is an article in Dagens Nyheter about this today.