So what's a Silicon Valley consultant to the wireless industry to do?

Just this: He reaches into his bag, fires up his new Sony laptop, connects it to his Ricochet wireless modem, logs onto www.mapquest.com and locates an alternative route using side streets. And he makes his meeting. Barely.

For the 33-year-old entrepreneur, who spends hours each week traveling between his home office in San Francisco and meetings throughout the Bay Area, his car has become a second workplace. And when in the driver's seat, he brings with him all of the accoutrements of the modern high-tech command center -- a Palm Pilot, wireless modem, computer and, of course, his gleaming new cellphone, the Nokia 8290.

"It used to be so frustrating when you were stuck in traffic because you were throwing time away," says Berger, who schedules conference calls for times when he knows he'll be on the road. "Now, even though traffic has gotten worse, you can reclaim part of that time by being productive."

While Berger may seem as wired as a Christmas tree strung with too many blinking lights, his use of new technology on the road is not all that unusual these days. And though he insists he has never had a close call while fiddling with his devices or networking on his cellphone, it is exactly that possibility that worries legislators, safety experts and others -- and has spurred 10 towns and counties, including two within just the past few weeks, to pass ordinances restricting wireless phone use while driving.

The issue has gained new visibility because of this week's trial of Jason Jones, the nation's first cellphone-using driver known to have been charged with vehicular manslaughter. The non-jury trial, held in Upper Marlboro, Md., ended Wednesday evening with Jones' acquittal on the manslaughter charge. The judge, however, found him guilty of negligent driving and gave him the maximum sentence possible: a $500 fine and four points on his driver's license.

According to a recent study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 85 percent of the estimated 107 million cellphone subscribers in the United States use them while on the road. And many of these devices are good for much more than social chitchat or business dealmaking; they let you receive and send e-mail, access information on plummeting (or, more rarely these days, rising) stock prices, find out who's ahead in the post-election presidential race at a given moment and browse through your favorite Web sites -- all while cruising the highways at 80 miles per hour. (Also coming to the U.S. cellphone market soon: instant messaging.)

But what may be even more worrisome is the shipment just delivered to a car dealer near you: autos equipped with up-to-the-minute features like hands-free cellphones and monitors the size of mini-T.V. screens, which can display not only the driver's geographic location but weather, sports and news items as well. Hey, why not read about Robert Downey Jr.'s most recent arrest as you round that blind curve?

Those in the traffic-safety business term these in-car activities "driver distraction." And this catchall phrase can be applied not just to activities associated with new technology but to almost everything we do in our cars, from inhaling a fast-food burger to applying your favorite Mac Verve lipstick to lunging at the radio to flip off that irritating Backstreet Boys single.

Law enforcement and highway patrol authorities are especially concerned about driver distraction, which is believed to account for roughly a quarter of all crashes and is considered largely preventable. And they express growing concern that the proliferation of electronic devices is leading to so much techno-multitasking in cars that it is endangering hundreds of thousands of people's lives each year.

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