If you have such faith in biased "research", other research has showed that on many roads the vehicles were mostly carrying only the driver. Therefore it's probable that there are many, many more drivers using a phone than chatting to a passenger?

On that point, did this "research" note the percentage of drivers using a phone whilst driving? If there's more drivers doing that whist driving alone, it's logical that more of those drivers would be distracted?

Just to be clear..... although I used a phone in the early days of the mobile phone and before that used a hand-held microphone (for radio), today there are far more cars on the road and also far too many of those hunched-up cars where the driver has poor situational awareness and drives two ot even three feet from the side of the road (which is another story) so I keep both hands on the steering wheel these days......

So, if a ban on using a hands free phone is to be promoted, chatting to passengers should also face a ban. Next thing it'll be proposed that the driver should be in a separate compartment of his own so he can't interact with any passengers?

You can't legislate for every eventuality so some sense needs to be applied and drivers lacking in sense should face a lengthy ban.