ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. — Newfoundland drivers will have to keep their hands off their cellphones or face a fine beginning Tuesday, when the province becomes the first in Canada to ban hand-held use while behind the wheel.

Police will begin issuing fines ranging from $45 to $180 to motor-mouthed motorists caught breaking the ban. Drivers could also receive demerit points. Drivers have been buying up hands-free devices that will allow them to keep talking without a getting a ticket.

"It's been a steady stream of people," Gary Vardy, general manager of DownEast Communications, said a few days before the law was to take effect.

Even if it is good for business, Vardy doesn't support the law.

"If it was left up to me, I'd go after the people who are reading papers or drinking coffee or eating doughnuts," he said.

George Sweeney, Newfoundland and Labrador's minister in charge of transportation, said he's seen drivers on the road with a cup of coffee in their hand and a cellphone to their ear.

"The use of a cellphone is another form of impaired driving," he said.

More than 30 countries have outlawed hand-held cellphones while driving, including Australia, Germany and Japan.

Eleven million Canadians use cellphones and the federal government says it's up to each province to decide whether or not to curb their use in cars.

Bans have been proposed in Ontario and Nova Scotia but the Alberta legislature rejected similar legislation last year.

And at a meeting of provincial transport ministers last fall, neither Manitoba nor Quebec supported the idea.

"There are many distractions in vehicles," said Manitoba's Steve Ashton. "Finding a CD and putting a CD in is seen in accident reports, but do we ban that from vehicles? There's more suggestion the main distraction in a vehicle is the act of talking with others in the vehicle."

A study by the Saskatchewan government suggested that while 25 per cent of accidents in the province were caused by distracted drivers, just 1.25 per cent involved cellphones.

But an Ontario coroner's jury recommended a ban on cellphone use by drivers last September following an inquest into the deaths of Richard Schewe and his two-year-old daughter, Mikaela.

The father and daughter were killed after their vehicle collided with a train at a railroad crossing in Pickering, Ont., just east of Toronto. Schewe had been talking on a cellphone with his wife when he apparently failed to stop.

The Canadian Medical Association has urged that hand-held cellphones be banned for drivers - a move both the RCMP and Royal Newfoundland Constabulary support.

"I think we all in the past have used hand-held cellphones while driving," said Staff Sgt. Barry McNeil, head of traffic services for the RCMP in Newfoundland and Labrador.

"I know I've done it in the past. You go to dial the number while you're driving. It's difficult."

However, the Canada Safety Council is opposed to the law. It isn't the technology that causes accidents, the council says, but the distraction of conversation.

"Whether it's hand-held or hands-free, it really doesn't matter," said Raynald Marchand, manager of traffic safety for the Ottawa-based group.

The Newfoundland government doesn't even have statistics for accidents involving cellphone use. Their law is based on an opinion poll, Marchand said.

The province commissioned a poll that suggested that 95 per cent of residents believed cellphone use by drivers was a serious or very serious safety problem. Fifty-five per cent thought it should be prohibited entirely and 39 per cent felt hands-free use was acceptable.

"Is this a safety countermeasure or is this a political move?" asked Marchand.

"If we pass law on the basis of surveys of what people like, we're going to be a very restricted society."

There are other activities much more likely to cause an accident, he said.

"You see sometimes a couple arguing in the car ... That's highly hazardous," Marchand said.