Hands-off approach to phoning

Setting aside the debate of whether or not that's actually enough to make roads safer, I started thinking about the different kinds of gear available to make sure I'm not breaking this new law. So I went to see Aram Masseredjian, an acquaintance of mine who works at a local Roger's store at Fairview shopping centre.

According to Aram, there are basically three different ways to get yourself on the right side of the law.

"One option is a wired headset," he said. That's basically phone wiz talk for headphones paired with a small microphone. Plug them in to your headphone jack and you're good to go. At $20-$30, this is the cheapest way to converse hands-free, but it can be a little inconvenient. Imagine having a wire constantly dangling from your ears as you drive. One abrupt blind spot check and the whole contraption can easily pop off. Worse, you can probably get your hand or arm tangled up in there.

So you can risk that or just pay a little bit more (well…starting at a little bit more, since the range is actually $50-$200) for a wireless, Bluetooth-enabled headset. It's the same idea as the wired one, but free of any tethers. "Most phones these days are Bluetooth-enabled," Aram said. The easiest way to check you are up to date is to look at your cell phone's application or media menu. The name changes according to what company you pay your bills to, but Bluetooth is actually a brand name, so it should appear the same way on all phones as an option.

The third option is a wireless speakerphone. Bluetooth-enabled as well, you set this small device up on a safe and steady spot in your car near the dashboard and hook your phone up to it. Speakerphones are in the same price range as wireless headsets. The more expensive ones among both these options offer various features, such as call display, which seems silly since the whole point of having these devices in the first place is to keep your concentration on the road. A more useful feature of the high-end ones is noise reduction, which cancels out ambient noise around you so both you and your converser know what you are saying.

Of course, Aram didn't say it, but there is a fourth option too. "You're making me do something illegal right now so I’m afraid I'm going to have to hang up on you." Hey, I did it on the 1st and it worked out fine for me. So why don't you give it a shot?