I hope I have made it clear, starting last January, that I think travelers need to know all they can about a land-based safety issue: Distracted driving caused by talking or texting on a cell phone while behind the wheel. After all, more than two-thirds of all business travel isn't in the air -- it's on the ground.

Just after the New Year's holiday, I posted a report on this blog on the National Safety Council calling for a complete ban on using a phone, handheld or not, along with texting and other distracted-driver behavior. I wrote a column the first week of February supporting such a ban.

Since then, a groundswell has pushed the issue into the news time and time again. The Philadelphia City Council passed an ordinance in the spring prohibiting use of handheld phones while driving; New Jersey already had such a law, and many other jurisdictions have adopted such rules or are considering them. The Inquirer and others have editorialized on the issue, supporting more regulation. Reports of deadly commuter-train and car crashes caused by the distraction of texting have given the story legs, as we say in the news biz.

What's new: The U.S. Department of Transportation yesterday held its first widely publicized conference on the issue of distracted driving. Find an AP story from Washington on that here.   . The most detailed reporting on the topic has been done by The New York Times, which published its latest installment in its "Driven to Distraction" series today. It's long, and well worth reading. Find it here.

American Express Co.'s travel advisory unit today forecast that travel costs are likely to rise slightly next year, reflecting pent-up demand coupled with changes in supply. Business class air fares will see some of the greatest fare increases because of the need for businesses to keep traveling internationally. A few stats from the report are in a Travel Weekly trade-newspaper article found here.

At the same time, Amex officials said at a news conference that there is a "new normal" level of business travel, with companies scrutinizing every trip by every traveler, that will keep cost increases modest. More use of teleconferencing -- like the techology Amex was using to broadcast its news around the world -- is part of a serious effort to keep costs down and find ways to measure ROI, or return on investment, of every trip.

One of the most interesting tidbits from the forecast was a note that when measuring average air fares, what can't be precisely included is how "ancillary fees," such as for checked bags, add to the cost of air travel. Best estimate by the Amex experts: Add about 15 percent to the cost of the average air trip to get the true bottom line figure these days.

I will tell you more about the data that Amex reported in an  upcoming column.