Your cell phone rings while you are driving. What does the manual tell you to do?
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A.
Answer it, but keep the call under two minutes.
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B.
Pull onto the highway shoulder straight away to take the call.
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C.
Let it go to voicemail and return the call once you are stopped somewhere safe. Correct
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D.
Have a passenger hold the phone to your ear so both hands stay on the wheel.
The answer is "Let it go to voicemail and return the call once you are stopped somewhere safe."
The manual tells you that you do not have to answer a ringing phone: let someone leave a message, and return the call once you are stopped at a safe location. The ring is not an obligation, and nothing about answering it becomes safe because the call is short, because a passenger holds the phone to your ear, or because you have pulled onto a highway shoulder in moving traffic. Drivers who pick A are carrying over the rule-of-thumb that a quick call is a low-risk call, which the manual nowhere endorses.
The traps in the wrong answers
A. Answer it, but keep the call under two minutes.
The manual sets no time limit on a call, and a short call takes your attention from the road exactly as a long one does. This answer borrows the rule-of-thumb that a quick call is a low-risk call, and reads it as a two-minute cap the manual never prints.
B. Pull onto the highway shoulder straight away to take the call.
The manual does not tell you to pull over for a ringing phone, it tells you that you do not have to answer at all: let it go to voicemail and return the call once you are stopped somewhere safe. Treating the ring as a reason to leave the travel lane straight away still lets the phone decide what you do next, which is the habit the manual is working against.
D. Have a passenger hold the phone to your ear so both hands stay on the wheel.
The manual does ask a passenger to help, but by placing the call and speaking in your place, not by holding a phone to your ear while you carry the conversation. This answer reads the passenger instruction as a hands-free workaround, keeping the driver on the call when the manual means to hand the call off entirely.
This question tests your knowledge of Distracted Driving in North Carolina. Source: North Carolina Driver Handbook, "Chapter 4, Your Driving: Cell Phones," p.42..
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