Today is the day. It's the day that's been looming in the future for quite some time, but it's not looming anymore. Today is the day that E.T. can no longer phone home if he's driving a car. It's the day that you can't call Blondie from the fast lane, and you can't drop a dime if your foot is on the gas. If you're younger 18-years-old you can't even text message your BFF while driving to the mall.

As you probably know, from today and into the future it's against the law to drive while holding a cell phone up to your ear. To honor the last day of cellular mobile freedom, the dedicated staff of edhat.com did one last count of last minute callers. We sat on our favorite wall at the Four Corners intersection (Ralphs, gas station, Greyhound, and the hotel formerly known as the Andalucia), and watched 500 drivers driving 500 cars. What we found was that 23 of those 500 (4.6%) were smiling and dialing, hands-not-free.

Well, those 23 people had better clean up their acts today. If not, they might end up coughing-up $20 to the judge the next time they see a police officer in their rear view mirror.

By the way, we also saw six people with dogs in their front seats - leash-free as it were. For the time being there is no law against that … but there really should be, don't you think? … especially when the dog is sitting on the driver's lap.

Even though we've done this particular count many times, our dedicated subscribers haven't figured out that the percentage of drivers on the phone is much lower than it seems. Only one subscriber (IronScotty) guessed lower than 4.6%. However, this will not be the 10th victory for contestant number one. Remarker had closest guess (5%), winning him/her a hands-free t-shirt.

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