Earlier today, The Wall Street Journal published an article saying that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration considers use of mobile phones with hands-free accessories to be just as dangerous for drivers as using the phone without the hands-free accessories.

Steve Mushero pointed out the estimate of the number of call minutes used by mobile users while in their cars: "Do you believe this(?) - one billion minutes per day; mind boggling (sort of like over one billion pieces of mail per day in the USPS; the scale is inconceivable)."

The Wall Street Journal article itself says: "American drivers spend roughly a billion minutes a day talking on their cellphones, an estimated 40% of all cellular minutes."

By this estimate, Americans use 2.5 billion minutes per day when you include mobile phone use outside of cars. That's a total of 75 billion minutes per month, assuming that a month is 30 days long. If there are 300 million people in the USA, then that's about 250 minutes per month for every man, woman, and child in America.

Do I have the numbers right?

To answer Steve's question, I don't believe that Americans are actually using 75 billion mobile minutes per month. Not that many people use 1,000 minutes per month, and there are many Americans that still use zero minutes. [ subscription required to read the Wall Street Journal article ]