This was not “paying attention.” You were doing two things at once. Even hands free use should be discouraged.
live streaming and using applications
You were live streaming, dude. Literally. Using an application. This is dangerous, reckless, and EXACTLY what is being addressed by the legislation. Maybe you need to work on your schedule if you don’t have time for everything.
I’m sure that the Livestreaming is more so you can’t document interactions with cops live to the internet. That way, after they shoot you they can take the SD card out of the camera for “evidence” (which then gets lost).
Oh, and @stephen_schenck, there is a county and a city in Ohio named Delaware, just north of Columbus. It’s weird, but it is really there. (There’s also an Ottawa county.)
Driving hands-free isn’t actually safe. Additionally, drivers tend to turn their car radios down/pause their conversations during moments when they really need to focus, so not being able able to do this to keep up some idiot ruse is making an unsafe practice even more dangerous.
I was in this talk few months ago where the speaker couldn’t answer a question from the audience and he had to defer to his coauthor. And there she appeared, on her treadmill, fielding the question. I thought that it was the best idea ever! Now, if I’m not presenting, there is a decent chance that I’m on my rowing machine.
The constant fiddling with his phone while driving
Even hands free use should be discouraged.
Driving hands-free isn’t actually safe
I somewhat agree with all this; I personally never use a phone while driving, and don’t listen to interesting radio or other passengers when driving in my town, which is a big city with lots of things happening on the roads. However, I used to live in the rural midwest, and there are long stretches on the roads where listening to talk radio or an audiobook or your colleagues over the phone wouldn’t be a real danger, except the latter might put you to sleep.
The fiddling with the phone, like setting a gps or finding a radio station that isn’t rubbish, is probably something best done while stationary.
Re the whole “concentrate on your driving in order to keep things safe-ish” thing, a hands-free phonecall is roughly on par with driving around with an alcohol content of 60-80 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of blood. That’d be just below the legal limit in a lot of countries.
Different studies come up with, surprise, different numbers - but that’s the neighbourhood you end up in.
Apparently conversations via hands-free devices cause some drivers to visually imagine what is being discussed. Unfortunately the brain areas needed to create those mental images are the same brain areas that are needed for accurate visual perception of the driving situation. If you are blocking that part of the brain with a visual image, it is not able to perceive new information, such as person in the road.
University of Sussex did an interesting study on this in 2016.