The federal government is giving $550,000 to Connecticut and Massachusetts for pilot projects to crack down on people who text while driving.

Each state is getting $275,000 grants to develop “high-visibility anti-texting enforcement programs,” which will include stationing police spotters on highway overpasses looking for motorists who can’t keep their fingers off the keypad.

 “We have come a long way in our fight against distracted driving, but there is still much work to be done,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Tuesday in announcing the grants. “Texting behind the wheel is especially dangerous, which is why we’re working with states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to address this important safety issue.”

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The money will be used to develop and train police officers on better methods for spotting texting drivers, and to develop media campaigns that alert the public to the dangers of texting and driving.

The Department of Transportation says distracted driving has become even more dangerous with the proliferation of cellphones. In 2010, more than 3,000 people were killed in distracted driving crashes that included texting, talking on a cellphone, eating and drinking, grooming, and other activities.

The agency cites research that found drivers who use handheld devices are four times more likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves.  Text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted, according to research.

Thirty-nine states have laws on the books that specifically ban texting, and 10 states have laws that prohibit the use of handheld cell phones while driving, according to federal transportation officials. 

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Despite such laws, prior demonstration programs conducted in Hartford, Conn., and Syracuse, N.Y., found that it's more difficult to detect texting drivers than drivers talking on a handheld device, the Transportation Department said.  The vast majority of tickets issued under those programs were for handheld phone use – only about 5 percent were for texting violations.

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“While it is relatively easier for law enforcement to determine illegal handheld cellphone use by observing the position of the phone at the driver’s ear, the dangerous practice of texting while driving is often not as obvious,” said David Strickland, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in a press release. “These two new demonstration programs will help identify real-world protocols and practices to better detect if a person is texting while driving.”

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The grants will help Connecticut and Massachusetts develop anti-texting enforcement protocols and techniques, such as using stationary patrols, spotters on overpasses or elevated roadways and roving patrols. The results will be documented for the benefit of other states.

“I look forward to seeing the results of the new enforcement programs announced today as we work to put an end to this deadly behavior,” LaHood wrote Tuesday on  the Transportation Department’s fastlane.dot.gov blog. 

You can find more government information on distracted driving at distraction.gov.

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Concertgoers at the New York Philharmonic Tuesday night did not have to be musicologists to work out that the marimba was not part of the famous work.

Conductor Alan Gilbert halted the performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony when the offending iPhone ringtone sounded -- and persisted.

Just minutes from the end of the hour and a half-long piece, Gilbert turned to the phone's owner, seated close to the front of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, according to an eyewitness account published by "Superconductor" blogger Paul Pelkonen.

“The symphony ends incredibly quietly so there was literally no way that we could go on, Gilbert told NBC News. "So I stopped the music and I asked the general vicinity where the sound was coming from ‘please turn off your cellphone.’ And I had to ask several times..."

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In the ensuing pause, some in the audience reportedly called for blood, shouting: "Kick him out!" and "$1,000 fine!" the witness recounted.

Gilbert quietly employed shame until the offender -- described as an elderly man by another blogger -- confirmed that the phone was off.

Before continuing with the concert, Gilbert apologized and explained that normally it’s best to ignore such disturbances, but he said this was "so egregious that I could not allow it."

This was the first time Gilbert has stopped the orchestra for a violation of the "cell-phones off" rule, a media contact at the symphony said, but at least the second time that it has happened in the symphony’s history.

For classical music buffs who witnessed it, there was some satisfaction to be gained from the incident, which occurred in what is otherwise a quiet and mesmerizing part of the Mahler work.

"In a way, it’s great that that schlimazel’s iPhone happened to go off at such a sweet spot in Mahler’s Ninth on Tuesday. All of us… got to exercise some righteous indignation, schadenfreude, and the adrenaline rush of watching a fight," wrote a classical music blogger on "thousandfold echo."

The downside, said the writer, was that after "Mahlergate" there was just no turning back the clock.

"After this kerfuffle, it’s impossible to talk about the actual music, just as it was impossible for listeners to return to the symphony’s transcendent stillness after the cellphone," with news coverage focused on the man with the marimba, and "nary a pixel spent on what came before or after."

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Medical scientists strongly endorsed the National Transportation Safety Board's recommendation Tuesday to ban nearly all use of cellphones and other portable electronics by drivers, saying the gizmos are just too distracting for the limited multitasking power of the human brain.

"I wholeheartedly support a ban on personal electronic devices, which provide an unprecedented degree of distraction that's very dangerous," said Dr. Lisandro Irizarry, chairman of the emergency department at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York.

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"Everyone from teenagers to senior citizens is texting," he said in an email to msnbc.com. "It's very easy to get distracted, especially when driving, and end up in the ER."

The NTSB's recommendation specifically said so-called hands-free devices, like Bluetooth headsets, don't solve the problem and should be part of the ban. 

US calls for ban on in-car phone use ... even with Bluetooth

That sounds great to Dr. Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, a neuroscientist who has studied how using cellphones impairs driving ability.

"Use of cellphones while driving — handheld or not — is really a hazard, a threat to public safety," Just told msnbc.com. "It costs lives."

The problem is that people think they're better drivers than they really are, and so they believe they can multi-task behind the wheel. 

"When you're driving, it feels kind of automatic, so it feels like you're not doing anything, but it's not true," Just said. "Various parts of your brain are working on scanning the road ahead, maintaining your speed, maintaining your lane — all of those things are being done even when it feels like it's not.

Obviously, we can do two things at the same time," he said. "But the critical point is we can't do them as well at the same time."
Processing a conversation with another person consumes 37 percent of the energy that's normally allocated to driving, Just's research indicates. That's "a very, very large percentage that has serious consequences for safety," he said.

While carrying on a conversation in person with a passenger is distracting, "typically there isn't quite as much a social onus on continuing the conversation," he said.

In other words, a passenger who's in the car with you knows enough to shut up if you encounter a hazard on the road. But "with a person on the other end of a cellphone, they don't know to stop talking if something happens," he said. 

While he hasn't quantified the difference, Just said, he's convinced "it's worse with a cellphone."

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