Do you think you can easily do two or three things at a time?  You probably feel that you are good at multitasking and that you have had a lot of practice.  You might even consider it part of good time management training.  However, how do you feel about the person driving the car next to you while he or she is using a cell phone or multitasking?

Chances are you try to get away from that person because you know he or she is not “all there.”  The National Safety Council agrees with you.  They are advocating a complete ban on cell phone usage while driving, including hands-free phones.  They also want businesses to take a stance and prohibit employees from using cell phones while driving on the job.

We are all so used to being accessible almost everywhere, and this would be a dramatic, possibly traumatic, change.  Yet limiting multitasking in this manner would cut back on crashes and fatalities.  Driving and talking on the phone are the equivalent of drunk driving, and according to the council doing so quadruples the risks of crash.

It would take years before any such ban could work its way into law, but that doesn’t mean we could not be individually proactive:

• If it’s not an urgent call or message, wait until you’ve arrived before calling back.
• If it is so important that you want to take it now, pull off the road as soon as you safely can while you continue the conversation.

Multitasking is rarely the most productive way to get more things done because we end up shifting our focus back and forth between tasks, and that actually takes longer than doing one thing followed by another.  However add in the element of danger to ourselves and others, and that should be even more incentive to evaluate our habits and make changes.