Points for phoning/texting - Insurance companies hiking premiums/refusing to insure

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^^^ Actually you can catch hand-held mobile phone offences with front facing talivan type cameras.

thenudeone wrote: »

... which can't be dealt with by fixed penalties, and requires a detailed statement explaining why the driver's action reduced the attention they were paying to the road.

We live in the real world. The more complicated and time-consuming it is to prosecute an offence, the less likely it is that the police will spend the time to do so.

So instead you create a new offence that completely fails to address the core problem (having a phone conversation in an improper manner is distracting), criminalises perfectly safe activities (having a phone conversation while parked with the engine running) and legitimises unsafe activities (having a phone conversation in an improper manner, while using a handsfree kit, is still distracting) thus causing people who generally try to stay within the law to actually take up the unsafe practice (I've got this handsfree kit, I may as well use it)

This actually makes things worse and brings the whole fixed penalty into even further disrepute.

Perhaps a better solution would be to streamline the prosecution process for a due care process. If it's acceptable to submit camera evidence and no copper for speeding offences (they send a civilian camera partnership employee to court if it goes that far) then why not allow similar for police car footage?

They could send an FPN saying "hey, we have footage of you driving like an idiot, you can view it online at this address (some forces already do this for speed/red camera evidence) pay a fixed penalty or we'll prosecute. When it comes to court they can send a civilian advanced driver, who may or may not look like Quentin Wilson, to explain to the magistrate why driving at 69mph in the fog with no lights on while on the phone is a bad idea and the magistrate can make the judgement. Because due care and attention cases are ultimately down to an invidual's judgement.

Norman_Castle

http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/17/traffic-accidents-plunged-during-blackberry-outage/

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The blackberry outage affected email services and BBM, not SMS text messages or voice calls.

I don't think anyone is going to argue that reading your email or using Instant Messaging while driving is a bad idea.


Edit: Thinking about it, the figures given in that article, 20% for Dubai and 40% for Abu Dhabi really just show that the very rich simply don't give a damn and think they are above the law.