I heard my first complaint about cellphones sometime after the turn of the century.

A caller was walking downtown with former Sheriff Joe Squadrito, and as they crossed the street, in the crosswalk, an oblivious motorist talking on a cellphone rounded the corner and almost ran them over.

Something had to be done about people who talk on phones while they drive, the caller said.

My reaction wasn’t, “We should ban cellphones,” but instead one of, “Boy, I wouldn’t want to be the guy who ran down Joe Squadrito.”

Eventually, people started looking into the issue of driving while talking on the phone, and at least one study concluded it was as dangerous as driving drunk.

Talking on the phone is nothing compared to texting while driving, though. As far as I’m concerned, texting, surfing the Internet and the like are comparable to driving while passed out.

Texting while driving has now been outlawed in Indiana, and I don’t have a problem with that.

Personally, I find cellphones irritating. It seems as though no one is able to do anything today without getting on a cellphone and making small talk with someone at the same time.

Now, the National Transportation Safety Board, citing a fatal wreck in Missouri caused by a teen who was texting, has called for a national ban on using a cellphone – even one with hands-free devices – in any way while driving a car.

It shouldn’t matter to me because I don’t have a cellphone, but I do have a problem with such an extensive ban. As far as I’m concerned, that is the height of bureaucratic overkill.

Distractions are everywhere when driving. People tune their radios while driving. They adjust their clocks while driving when daylight saving time arrives. They fumble with CDs, flipping them in and out of their CD players.

They have conversations with passengers and yell at their kids in the back seat. They eat sandwiches and drink coffee and sightsee and look for addresses and read maps and monitor their GPS gizmos while they drive.

They even put on makeup from time to time and watch movies on portable DVD players.

And sometimes they get lost in thought – or worry – and just zone out.

Nowadays, people sometimes talk on the phone, too, asking for directions, telling people they’ll be late or having pointless conversations.

Sometimes these distractions – or lapses in attentiveness – lead to accidents. That’s what happens when you put 250 million cars on the road.

The NTSB’s logic in calling for a total cellphone ban is that it wants to make the roads safer.

So let’s outlaw GPS devices and radios and CD players and eating or smoking while driving and even forbid drivers having conversations with passengers.

Fortunately, the NTSB only has the power to make recommendations and not, in an act of gross overreaction, unilaterally impose regulations in an effort to create a risk-free world.