Harrison Cooper wrote: > > I suppose...it comes down to a sign. Please turn off your cell phones and 2 > way radios. Life support of who you are visiting may be affected. Education could help, also (Why - I've always wondered - is there no requirement for any sort of safety education before someone gets a Cell Phone? Deregulate, yep, but only when doing so is SAFE... The industry could do better here.) Having seen handheld radios cause 2 (at least) wheelchairs to decide to drive around on their own - "Look Ma, no hands!", and cell phones do the same, I know it's a problem for a few more cases than hospital electronics. Obviously those electronics "should" be shielded pretty well, as someone could get seriously hurt! But - they're not. (And I'd support making it mandatory for a driver to use a headset, or other hands-free rig, or be required to park, as I've been darn near run over too often by cell phone users who're holding the phone with one hand and gesturing with the other, and paying NO attention to the road, in heavy traffic... I guess eventually those twits will not be driving any more, but they'll hurt someone in the process.) The real problems are stupidity, lack of understanding/courtesy, also the differences in peoples' voices (My voice carries really well, it's fairly deep & I have to pay attention in hospitals & etc. Some people can talk loud without it carrying as well), and greed (Hospitals don't need to be money-making places, they need to be places doing a good job of helping people HEAL, dangit! I don't mind them making money in the process, but some of them need to get & keep their priorities straight!) We can't make stupidity illegal We can educate, and work on health care systems to make them serve us better... And I imagine if someone were cited for attempted murder & that case publicised in the media, THAT might help some people get a clue? (Though it's not illegal to do something that has a low chance of causing someone's death, sometimes at least, but a civil "wrongful death" suit would pose a nasty threat, some good education potential {though in so *negative* a manner!}, there...) I worked on a project which was about detecting cell phone locations, I suspect the cell phone service providers could probably set up a "No Service" zone in & around the hospital if laws were created to cause this to be mandated; Have to re-program existing cell phones, though. Something like the Locust idea (Little IR transmitters that send low-power IR signals as localizer beacons) could be used both for "you cannot transmit here" purposes, and/or for "You can transmit here" purposes here, in the near-hospital areas... (See http://wearables.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/locust/ for details on these.) Rig the IR sensor so it won't work unless there's some ambient IR, so an "accidentally" misplaced finger won't disable this feature Mark, mwillis@nwlink.com