[Closed] Tackling Mobile Phone Use - Government Consultation - your input required!

Done, ta.

Done. Interesting survey as it seemed to be pushing the idea that somehow, mobile phone companies and insurance companies should be doing more, when it's clearly an issue about personal responsibility and enforcement.

Can we make this a sticky please mods?

No mention of increased enforcement activity at all. It's a sop to be seen to be "doing something". Pointless without real, live police officers patrolling the roads.
I'm oot

@sandwich - that was my feedback.
As for expecting mobile phone companies to help - that's like expecting car companies to make slower cars, in order to address speeding issues.

My thoughts too - seems to suggest every way to deal with the problem apart from actually doing more to catch people doing it. Filled it in with comments to that effect.

Agree with sandwich et al. I drove about 5000 miles last year between April and August- not a single traffic patrol car did I see. Now that I drive a van, I can look down into cars as I or they pass, and can see how brazen they've got. Nothing short of a 'blitz' will sort this.

All the opportunities to respond with a comment I entered. - without enforcement increasing penalties does nothing, so why not increase enforcement?

I too mentioned enforcement in the comments. Not sure how they'll process it - maybe look for the most common words in the comments?

Enforcement high on my list - as with so much pointless legislation in the last decade or more, if they just enforced the existing laws, the problem could go away.

loutish drunken behaviour in the streets? Well, you could take away the license of any place that served underage people, or drunks, and you do the drunks for drunk and disorderly - would be messy for a few months, but the laws are there....

I'm a bit unhappy filling that it. We need to catch people, i don't like the unlikely to get caught but harsh punishment approach

You could easily make catching people self funding

Train and employ person. Issue them with a film camera. They stand in Luton and take snaps of idiots on the phone and driving

Even of only 10% of the £100 goes towards training and employing said person they will be ahead in cash terms in under a year

I didn't mention enforcement but did repeatedly include in the comments that the penalties were nothing like enough considering the implications of the crime could equal death or serious injury.

Interesting to see where this one goes... as with falling government spending not looking likely to reverse for some time now, we might find that technology-based solutions rather than policemen on the streets are the only things we can afford to put in place now...

Rather depressing isn't it?
The suggested penalties show that it regarded as a trivial offence with nothing but lip service being paid to those who object to phones being used whilst driving.

I asked that members of the public should be allowed to submit pictures of offending drivers which can then be deemed admissible as evidence. This is how we stop it, get loads of interfering annoying gits like me taking photos on their walk to work. I could nail at least 6 every day on my foot commute through Swindon.

This worked in our town when vigilantes took photos of kerb crawlers in Manchester Road. Within a month they had driven prostitution away. Admittedly to another street...

Sites like Fix My Street are hated by local authorities, but they have made a real difference. We need Grass a Driver.com

Problem is it is so much easier to catch speeders than mobile phone users.

So they will keep wheeling out the speed guns.

I think it was a pretty poor questionnaire, structured more around gauging support for a specific set of proposals than really finding out what people think, or looking for other ideas or suggestions.

I filled it out as best as I could, lots of comments.

While I do support stronger penalties I would rather see effort focused on detection as a starter...

Don't really see it having much effect otherwise...

We need Grass a Driver.com

I did make a similar suggestion in the survey, although I'm sure it would lead to all sorts of "Helmet cam vigilante" claims...

I've done the survey. My suggestion is that all phone providers give a Bluetooth hands free device specifically for in car use...they only cost £30! The amount of drivers in s**** you cars with phones clamped to their ears never ceases to amaze me, £40,000 for their big posh BMW/Mercedes/Audi/Jaguar etc etc and no hands free kit?
Slap a months driving ban or load insurance premiums for phone use points would soon reduce it but that needs traffic enforcement police to be on the roads.

I suggest a 4 digit fine AND 6 points for a first offence. I felt that was being soft. True they have to be caught but my fines would finance specialist officers. I'd do the same to speeding as well.

Suggsey, sadly most of those vehicles probably do have functioning blue tooth connection. I honestly believe that there's some kind of psychological thing going on where certain types of people feel that's beneath their level of importance and driving skills to use it or they are so dam important the law doesn't apply. See also the 100+ crew on the motorway.

Mate of mine got a course thing for getting nicked using a hand held phone not long after the ban came in.

The thing he always quoted was that a hand held phone conversation had roughly the same impact on your driving as four strong lagers.

So in penalty territory is it time to head into drink drive length mandatory bans?

Doesn't stop the enforcement problem I appreciate but if what he told me was true there's your target

I think there's decent evidence that even hands-free phones are as big an effect on driving as being over the drink limit

govt bottled out of banning all phones in cars and now we've got this bollocks where people think it's ok because there's not much difference between hands-on and hands-free. And they're right

Speeding on an empty motorway is considerably less dangerous and likely to injure someone than being on a phone driving past a school at kicking out time (I see this two or three times a DAY when cycling away from school at said time)...

I must be honest I assumed that all these fancy expensive cars and even a lot of new mid range cars came with Bluetooth enabled phone connectivity but was giving the benefit of doubt to the seemed masses that I see every day.

My suggestion is that all phone providers give a Bluetooth hands free device specifically for in car use..

No way. Plenty evidence that hands free mobile use is dangerous. It's the act of carrying on a remote conversation that is the problem, not holding a phone.

I agree with the other comments above about the nature of the survey. They could have replaced most of it with one question asking "Would you like offenders to be slapped on the wrist gently, or very gently?" The questions about whether HGV offences should be treated more harshly also seemed misplaced. It needs to be a serious offence for everyone.

It would be trivially easy to pick up a string of phone users on many urban road junctions if the authorities really wanted to make a point.

Only if they double the fine/points for 5h1t driving 'cos that causes far more deaths/injuries.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/8702111/How-do-accidents-happen.html

[i]only 0.8 per cent were using a mobile phone[/i]

only 0.8 per cent were using a mobile phone

Only 0.8 admitted using a phone more like. The study used data gathered from police reports. Only in very serious accidents are driver's phones analyzed. So the majority of phone accidents won't be recorded as such.

Why not just ban the bloody things full stop?
Not needed, just wanted.

Bluetooth won't help as most of these people are on Facebook.

[quote=garage-dweller ]Suggsey, sadly most of those vehicles probably do have functioning blue tooth connection.

I did wonder that, given my 8yo bottom of the range Mondeo has it - are posh cars worse equipped?

Only 0.8 admitted using a phone more like. The study used data gathered from police reports. Only in very serious accidents are driver's phones analyzed. So the majority of phone accidents won't be recorded as such.

Even to the sort of shaved chimp who'd be doing it, "Oooooh no, officer, he just came out of nowhere" sounds better than "by the time I looked up from facebook there was nothing I could do"

Bluetooth won't help as most of these people are on Facebook.

This

I have a 10 minute drive or 25 minute bike ride to work. Every day I see people driving eyes down with a smartphone.

Or TNT drivers leaving the depot behind work fiddling with a digital device. A few years ago one of them drove his van smack into the back of a parked HGV just 300m outside the depot. A report in the local paper quoted the depot manager complaining that the industrial estate road needed adopting by the local authority so HGVs / trailers couldn't park. Not considering that the driver was driving down a wide open 30mph road whilst not looking where he was going.......

Edit - found it.

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/local/worker-hurt-in-smash-1-3162950

On the ferry back from Holland last year, I saw an HGV driver setting off with a laptop booted up and running on his dashboard. Had a word at the time, and reported it to the police as well. No reply.