Utah laws are not tough on driving while talking on a cell phone. Yet peer-reviewed research from the University of Utah confirms that talking on a cell phone while driving increases the odds of an accident at about the same rate as driving with a blood alcohol level of .08 percent, the legal limit.

It follows, then, that if driving under the influence of alcohol is illegal, driving while talking on a cell phone should be also. The risks are about the same, and the law should treat them similarly. Unfortunately, they don't.

We realize that it will be a tough sell to get the Legislature to come down hard on driving while phoning. One reason may be that most people, including legislators, who drive while phoning don't believe they are impaired. Interestingly enough, that's one of the conclusions of the U. of U. study.

It says that people who participated as research subjects, and who often drive while phoning in real life, thought it was no more difficult to drive while using a cell phone than to drive without one. The research, however, concludes otherwise.

U. researchers wanted to compare the performance of drivers who were talking on a cell phone with that of drivers with blood-alcohol levels at the legal limit. They recruited 40 people to participate in the study, all of them licensed drivers between the ages 22 and 34, all of them social drinkers and most them cell phone owners. They tested them all in a high-fidelity driving simulator: First when they were unimpaired, then while talking on cell phones and yet again while under the influence of alcohol at the legal limit.

The results were published last week in the journal Human Factors.

The study concludes that the nature of the impairments from alcohol and from cell phone use is different, but that both raise the risk of accidents to about the same degree. Cell-phone impairment is caused by the phone conservation diverting the driver's attention from the road, so it is no safer to drive with a hands-free phone.

Driving while phoning should be illegal, with exceptions for reporting emergencies. Otherwise, the law should require drivers to pull over if they must make or take a call.