Travel any route in Ireland today and you're sure to see somebody driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the other holding a mobile phone.
Those who make and receive mobile phone calls, or even send text messages, while driving may feel the practice has no ill effect on their driving, but studies have shown otherwise.
A review of international research on the subject by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA) in the UK has concluded it is impossible to use a mobile phone when driving without being significantly distracted and increasing the risk of a crash.
One study by a German university, corroborated by research carried out in New England, found drivers using hand-held mobile phones were six times more likely to make errors, and those using hand-free mobiles were three times more likely to make mistakes.
ROSPA claims the use of mobile phones by drivers has contributed to at least 17 fatal accidents in the UK.
In Japan, police figures for the first six months of 1998 show 1,248 traffic accidents took place while the drivers involved were using mobile phones. They resulted in 1,793 injuries and 22 fatalities. However, these were only a tiny percentage of all accidents in Japan during that period.
A survey by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, released this month, showed mobile phone use contributed to 140 of 102,293 accidents on Florida's roads during the first half of the year.
Here, driver error was found to be responsible for accidents in 85 per cent of cases last year, and the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, said he believes talking on mobile phones contributed to some of them.
He has asked a high-level committee to look urgently at the issue of whether the use of mobile phones while driving should be banned.
The AA, the National Safety Council and the Garda have urged drivers not to use mobile phones while driving but people weren't "taking a blind bit of notice", Mr Dempsey said.
There is no specific legislation in the Republic prohibiting the use of mobile phones while driving. However, the Garda can prosecute a driver using a mobile phone if their driving is affected in a way that would contribute to dangerous driving, careless driving or driving without due care and attention. Convictions have happened in this way but no details were available of exactly how many, the Garda press office said.
In Britain, where the use of mobile phones while driving is not a specific offence, a truck driver was jailed for five years in February for killing a pedestrian while sending a text message to his girlfriend.
Jailing Paul Browning (36), the presiding judge in Southend, Essex, said it was hard to imagine a more blatant act of cold-blooded disregard for safety on the road.
Mr Conor Faughnan, the AA's public affairs manager, agrees the use of mobile phones while driving is becoming "an everyday occurrence" but doesn't believe "throwing legislation at it" will make drivers stop.
"While you would accept the logic of the thought behind that argument, in fact it's not necessary. We don't need new laws. We need much better enforcement of the laws that are there already," he said.
He argues that a law making the wearing of seat belts compulsory didn't make people belt up, so he cannot see how banning the use of mobile phones while driving will be different.
"Simply writing a new law onto the statute books at a time when we are not enforcing the old laws is, to my mind, not particularly helpful at all," he said.
"I remain to a degree baffled why mobile phone use specifically should cause so much irritation and anger among people, whereas something which is at least as serious, and arguably much more serious, like not putting a seat belt on your child, causes an absolute lack of public annoyance."
The Garda press office rejected the suggestion that current laws are not being enforced. "Instances of dangerous driving that come to our attention are never ignored," a spokesman said.
A number of countries have banned the use of mobile phones by drivers. The Australian state of Victoria was the first to introduce legislation banning the use of hand-held phones while driving in 1988. Since then, the ban has been introduced nationwide, and a number of other countries, including Spain, Italy, Israel, Portugal and Brazil, have introduced similar bans, usually focusing on the restriction of hand-held phones.
The most recent ban was signed into law in New York state in June, making it an offence punishable by a $100 fine to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving.
Signing the bill, New York's Governor Mr George Pataki said too many families had suffered the tragedy of seeing a loved one injured, sometimes fatally, in an accident caused by someone who was driving and using a mobile phone. Bans are also in place in Brooklyn and Ohio and have been proposed in several other states.
Mr Faughnan said that just because Americans were banning the use of mobile phones in cars didn't necessarily mean we should follow suit.
"In-car telephones save lives. The immediate access to help in emergencies is priceless," he said.
"If we are serious about saving lives mobile phones should not be on the hit list. It's speeding, seat belt use and drink-driving that should be stopped."
The National Safety Council's chief executive, Mr Pat Costello, said the fact that more drivers were using mobile phones -proved to distract drivers - meant the risks to lives on the road were greater. "Driving requires full-time concentration and anything which distracts from that could lead to a fatal accident," he said.