new tougher rules for mobile phone users

Joe_Horner

Richard53 wrote: »

And please let us get rid of the 'exceptional hardship' rule. If you need to drive for your job, then you should be more aware than most of the need to drive safely, and should act accordingly.

The problem is, the intent behind the hardship rule is to prevent other, completely innocent, people from effectively being punished for your crime - which is right. Why should a wife (or husband) / child / employee suffer serious effects because of something they have no control over?

Of course, it's abused massively because that's what expensive lawyers do, but having a suitably severe alternative punishment that can't be avoided if hardship is invoked could go a long way to prevent that.

Perhaps tagging / curfew or even just driving limited to those journeys that prevent hardship. So, can drive on work business during work hours in specified vehicles but not at other times / for other reasons.

GingerBob wrote: »

I think you might.

I think you might be right - just curious how many out there take it seriously and approve of the idea

paddedjohn

The technology is there to stop the use of mobile phones in vehicles, it just needs implementing. There us no need whatsoever for any driver to answer/make calls, tough on passengers for the safety of the rest of us

shaun_from_Africa

paddedjohn wrote: »

The technology is there to stop the use of mobile phones in vehicles, it just needs implementing. There us no need whatsoever for any driver to answer/make calls, tough on passengers for the safety of the rest of us

Why not go for broke and fit GPS receivers and satnavs to all vehicles and have these connected to the engine management systems so that the vehicles can never exceed the posted speed limit.
You could also fit alcohol breath analysers so that all drivers have to blow into these before they start their cars and how about having a national fingerprint database with every vehicle fitted with a scanner and transmitter which must be used prior to starting any journey so that the driver of any vehicle can be identified at any time?

After all, the technology is available for all of the above as well so what's wrong with causing inconvenience and added costs to the large majority of perfectly law abiding drivers as long as it stops the drivers who ignore the law?

Robisere

Over the last week, driving on holiday 250+ miles from home and then driving home, I have seen:

* 3 truck drivers using mobiles, another actually eating a sandwich whilst reading a newspaper propped on the bottom of the windscreen.
* 7 car drivers using mobiles.
* 1 young woman driver, waving her finger and screaming at her child in the front passenger seat, whilst so out of control that the car was weaving all over the road.
* another young woman in a Porsche, in front of my car in a horrendously long traffic queue, repeatedly stopping to comb, then brush her hair. Long gaps opened up in front of her car, another driver drove into the gap, which she thought entitled her to sound her horn and open her window to scream abuse at him.

The final proof that some drivers should be euthanised, was provided by the moron behind me, who failed to see the lights and hear the sound of an ambulance. I had seen it in my mirrors some 200 yards away, so had everyone else, but this visually impaired idiot actually overtook me when I pulled over! I despair of some of the driving antics nowadays.

Iceweasel

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Why not go for broke and fit GPS receivers and satnavs to all vehicles and have these connected to the engine management systems so that the vehicles can never exceed the posted speed limit.
You could also fit alcohol breath analysers so that all drivers have to blow into these before they start their cars and how about having a national fingerprint database with every vehicle fitted with a scanner and transmitter which must be used prior to starting any journey so that the driver of any vehicle can be identified at any time?

After all, the technology is available for all of the above as well so what's wrong with causing inconvenience and added costs to the large majority of perfectly law abiding drivers as long as it stops the drivers who ignore the law?

All of the above is totally unnecessary.

What would solve all the safety problems would be a man (sorry - a person - male or female) walking in front of every vehicle with a red flag.

Accident rate fixed - unemployment rate fixed* - easy wasn't it?

*Immigration problem fixed too as we would need more immigration not less - as only those 'johnny foreigners' as T Wogan used to call all non-Brits (ignoring the fact he was Irish - before becoming British only so he could be Sir T) would take the flag wielding jobs.

pinkshoes

6 points and a fine just isn't enough and will not deter people from using their phones.

There are too many cars on the road, so having a driving license should be seen as a priviledge, and those caught breaking the rules need to be banned.

Being caught using your phone should be an instant 6 month ban with no exceptions.

If someone is stupid enough to be caught again, it should be a MUCH longer ban, and a third offence should be a jail sentence.

What we need is the use of mobile phones to become socially unacceptable, and to encourage members of the public to take photos and share them of anyone seen on their phone behind the wheel.

Sicard

Here's some facts:

The biggest in-car cause of fatalities is motorists texting, tweeting and taking calls.

An AA poll of 18,000 members found 38 per cent had been distracted by other people, radios, phones and sat-navs in the past 12 months. Of the nearly 7,000 who admitted losing concentration, 548 reported a near-miss and 106 had crashed.

Eighteen per cent said adult passengers were most at fault, 14 per cent blamed children, 13 per cent took their eye off the road to twiddle with their sat-nav and 12 per cent their mobile phone.

Of the 88 deaths caused by distractions in 2012, 17 were due to mobile use
Department for Transport
Official figures show mobile phones pose the biggest accident risk to drivers.

The Department for Transport said that of 88 deaths caused by distractions in 2012, 17 were due to mobile use – a higher death rate than other in-car causes.

AA president Edmund King, called for “smart” features on in-car devices to block them from use at the wheel, adding: “The higher kill rate for mobile phone-related reported accidents provides a strong wake-up call.”

Now call me naive but I'd say the head of the AA probably knows more about this subject than anyone else here.

Fat_Walt

Laurie_Sicard-Askey wrote: »

Here's some facts:

The biggest in-car cause of fatalities is motorists texting, tweeting and taking calls.

An AA poll of 18,000 members found 38 per cent had been distracted by other people, radios, phones and sat-navs in the past 12 months. Of the nearly 7,000 who admitted losing concentration, 548 reported a near-miss and 106 had crashed.

Eighteen per cent said adult passengers were most at fault, 14 per cent blamed children, 13 per cent took their eye off the road to twiddle with their sat-nav and 12 per cent their mobile phone.

Of the 88 deaths caused by distractions in 2012, 17 were due to mobile use
Department for Transport
Official figures show mobile phones pose the biggest accident risk to drivers.

The Department for Transport said that of 88 deaths caused by distractions in 2012, 17 were due to mobile use – a higher death rate than other in-car causes.

AA president Edmund King, called for “smart” features on in-car devices to block them from use at the wheel, adding: “The higher kill rate for mobile phone-related reported accidents provides a strong wake-up call.”

Now call me naive but I'd say the head of the AA probably knows more about this subject than anyone else here.

Can you put some context to that? Phone use being the causation in fatal accidents, what's the percentage?

Cornucopia

If enforcement were more effective, then perhaps fitting the blocking tech to vehicles after, say, 2 convictions, would be an improvement.

As always, though, the problem with increasing the complexity of these things is that (a) you then need new laws to protect the laws i.e. making it an offence to interfere with or remove the blocking tech, and (b) you need to have some way of enforcing it.

Where offences take place in cars or in people's homes, neither enforcement or punishment are straightforward.

neilmcl

Laurie_Sicard-Askey wrote: »

Here's some facts:

The biggest in-car cause of fatalities is motorists texting, tweeting and taking calls.

An AA poll of 18,000 members found 38 per cent had been distracted by other people, radios, phones and sat-navs in the past 12 months. Of the nearly 7,000 who admitted losing concentration, 548 reported a near-miss and 106 had crashed.

Eighteen per cent said adult passengers were most at fault, 14 per cent blamed children, 13 per cent took their eye off the road to twiddle with their sat-nav and 12 per cent their mobile phone.

Of the 88 deaths caused by distractions in 2012, 17 were due to mobile use
Department for Transport
Official figures show mobile phones pose the biggest accident risk to drivers.

The Department for Transport said that of 88 deaths caused by distractions in 2012, 17 were due to mobile use – a higher death rate than other in-car causes.

AA president Edmund King, called for “smart” features on in-car devices to block them from use at the wheel, adding: “The higher kill rate for mobile phone-related reported accidents provides a strong wake-up call.”

Now call me naive but I'd say the head of the AA probably knows more about this subject than anyone else here.

I love it when posters come along and see here are the facts then go ahead and plagiarise, word for word, something they've just googled and read from a newspaper from 2014 - http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/490393/Mobile-phone-use-the-biggest-cause-of-road-fatalities