Returning to UMass after spending President’s Day weekend at home, my welcome back to Amherst did not begin on a high note. There we were, sitting at a traffic light on Main Street. The light turned green and we started across the intersection when another car made a left turn directly in front of us.

There would’ve been a collision if we hadn’t slammed on the brakes and the other driver hadn’t made a sharp turn off the road – where he sat in a snow bank, bewildered, with his cell phone still glued to his ear.

Ever since cell phones came into existence, there’s been debate over the issue of talking while driving. More recently, several states have put strict prohibitory laws into effect. In New Jersey, being pulled over for talking on a cell phone is now a primary offense that will cost you a $250 ticket.

Similarly, Connecticut and New York both fine $100 for a first infraction, and New York will even penalize up to $500 for subsequent violations. Massachusetts has a comparable law in the works – on January 23, the House passed a bill that would impose cell phone regulations on Bay State drivers.

All of these aforementioned laws and penalties, though, revolve solely around handheld phones. If you’re chatting via OnStar or a Bluetooth device, you’re free to hit the road. But does whether you’re talking into a handheld phone or a headset really have a significant impact on road safety?

Consider my eventful return to UMass after President’s Day weekend. The incident had virtually nothing to do with the driver physically holding a cell phone to his ear.

The left-hand turn was perfectly executed and would have been lauded by any driver’s education instructor, if not for the fact that it was into an oncoming vehicle. Why he didn’t yield to a car with the right-of-way can most likely be explained by the distraction of the conversation.

Therefore, the larger issue at hand is cell phone use in general. Recent studies at MIT indicate that engaging in any cell phone conversation can put drivers in a problematic “mental fog.” Even more importantly, though, is the person – not the device that he or she is using to make the call.

You can be one of two people. There are those who memorized the driver’s education manual – and actually retained the information half an hour past the exam.

You program numbers into speed dial, dial only at (red) traffic lights for the purpose of quick conversations and immediately put down the phone if entering a situation that requires your undivided attention.

Several times, I’ve been sitting in the passenger seat beside a friend who was talking on a cell phone while driving. But as soon as the need arose to pass a pack of trucks or another car cut us off, the phone would suddenly be tossed to me. Thus, I would have an impromptu conversation with whoever happened to be on the line until the driver was in a position to safely drive and talk again.

But if you’re the type who is extremely confident in your multi-tasking abilities (you consider simultaneous driving, talking and texting to be a piece of cake), using a hands-free device probably won’t impact your overall driving habits.

It’s likely that you’ll consider yourself equally adept at navigating the roads while searching for your earpiece in the cup holders and repeatedly attempting to get your voice-activated system to actually dial the correct number.

Besides, even if you have a hands-free phone, there are a multitude of other driving distractions. How many times have you gone through the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru and realized that you didn’t unwrap and insert the straw into your Coolatta until you’re already on the road?

What about when your six-slot CD rotator has you thoroughly confused as to which disc is where? How about the animal lovers who bring their energetic dogs along for a ride of jumping against the dashboard and windows? What happens to parents when children start a Lego war in the backseat?

In these cases, whether or not there is an accident relies on the driver’s behavior. (So, show some willpower and hold off on drinking your Coolatta until you’ve reached a traffic light.)

Of course, there is the age-old argument that gabbing on a cell phone is the exact same as chatting with someone in the passenger’s seat. Except, if you’re merging onto Route 16 and suddenly it starts pouring rain and there’s an endless parade of tractor-trailer trucks in the left lane, the friend beside you will probably stop hounding you with questions about weekend plans.

The friend on the phone, however, is going to continue rattling off into your ear, clueless that you’re trying desperately to avoid being creamed between two trucks.

For all the hype over whether a cell phone law will pass in Massachusetts, will it even make a dent in improving road safety? Just yesterday I saw a woman applying mascara to her eyelashes as she cruised down the street. Maybe she’d learn a lesson if she hit one of the campus’s innumerable potholes. But that’s another story.

Katherine Marr is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].