A generation ago, drivers fiddled with the radio dials, cuddled with a partner up front or handed out graham crackers to toddlers in the back, all while sitting on top of their unbuckled seat belts.

Since then, the list of potential distractions has exploded. Today, voracious drivers barrel down freeways and through busy arterials while closing a real estate deal on a cell phone, checking e-mails on a BlackBerry or even text-messaging on a strawberry-colored MP3 player-phone called Chocolate.

There seems to be no limit to the capacity for human innovation – or denial. And as traffic safety research and data collection races to catch up to the latest food-flavored technology trends, it’s become clear – left to our own devices, we just can’t resist high-tech temptation.

Fortunately, the Washington Senate earlier this month passed a bill banning drivers from talking on hand-held cell phones, and just last Tuesday the House of Representatives passed a similar ban on text-messaging while driving. These measures have the potential to penetrate that bubble of denial. Their only real flaw may be that they don’t go far enough.

It’s misleading to exempt hands-free devices from these bans, says the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. They’re just as distracting as cell phones.

Critics may argue that drivers have always navigated the highways while carrying on conversations with their passengers. But there’s a critical difference. A flesh-and-blood passenger can help navigate, pause the conversation when the driving gets difficult and even help point out hazards. A virtual passenger, toiling in the office or perching over the kitchen sink, cannot.

And what of the other distractions that pull drivers away? Applying a coat of Maybelline Great Lash mascara in the mirror? Spreading out a feast of Chicken McNuggets complete with sweet ‘n’ sour dipping sauce for the kids? Changing CDs from the Beatles’ “Drive My Car” to Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You?”

They’re all lousy ideas. But mobile phone conversations comprise a category all their own. They top other distractions because they’re so intense and can last far longer. A recent University of Utah study concluded that driving while talking on a cell phone can be as dangerous as driving drunk.

As for text-messaging, a 53-year-old man caused a major pileup on Interstate 5 in December when he plowed into a car while typing on his BlackBerry.

The human capacity for denial is an amazing thing. Most of us drive through our days wrapped in it. We fear threats much rarer than car accidents, inexplicably panicking about airline flights and terrorists rather than bothering to keep our minds on the road.

In the 1980s, we discovered there’s nothing like a seat belt law to make us finally buckle up. We wish it weren’t true. But now it appears we’ll keep on dialing and tapping and yakking until the Legislature itself rolls down the window and yells: “Hang up that phone and drive.”