Are cell phone plans a major cause of distracted driving ?

[barndoor]

Are cell phone plans a major cause of distracted driving  second only to people's lack of will power to give up there phone while driving . 

If everyone had to pay the same flat rate of   say ...6 cents a minute or text  or whatever price  providers feel appropriate to still maintain their profit margin would it not  make it  easier to leave that phone in your pocket while driving .  As opposed to unlimited plans  where there is no incentive  for any call  limiting thought process. 

Just curious on the thoughts . 

[57]

@barndoor : I believe you are correct that once people have "unlimited" access, the situation becomes worse (people sending tens/hundreds of texts a day). However, even with a small cost like you mention, I'm not sure there would be a huge difference, with many people seemingly unable to go more than a minute without another dopamine fix from their small glass teat.

[barndoor]

Yes ... unfortunately it likely  would not be enough to overcome the  dopamine high .  I  had a look at  some of the paygo plan pricing in order to isolate the price with no phone cost interference and  I would think that like you say $.06 price is a bit low and a flat rate of about  $.15-$.17  would be more appropriate.  So a  10  minute call would  cost you almost  $2  instead of    the quarter it would theoretically cost  now if you are on a big  plan .  Is that  enough to overcome the dopamine effect  for even some ?

I guess it just boggles my mind a bit that in prepaid for example you are bringing the phone  and for a low use plan you will be looking at  a price in the $.30 a minute neighbour hood if not more  yet as you go to the higher priced plans the  price per min drops to about $.025 .   If you go to any other  retail  store and try to buy in  bulk you might get a 10% discount maybe even 20%  ....but if you asked to get an item reduced TO  10% of it's original sale price they would laugh you out of the store.