Tomorrow I have to be up at 5am, in London for 7.45 and geared up for multiple radio interviews around the country during the day as a road safety expert and regarding our safety campaign relating to the turning off of mobile phones whilst driving. I have been doing my homework in preparation for any questions that might be thown in my direction and it surprised me that in a recent survey, the number of drivers who thought it was not acceptable to use a hand held mobile had dropped from 84% in 2014 to 78% in 2016. In other words 22% of drivers think it is OK to use a hand held mobile whilst driving to make or receive calls, send texts or check social media. That is worrying. Anyway, if any of you listen to local radio in your area, you may well hear my dulcet tones. At the last count, there were apparently about 18 radio stations who had booked an interview so it will be a long day, the last being at 5.20pm tomorrow night.
in Saudi now it's 5000 riyals if u get caught that's a grand in our money! Might make people think a bit more , I got hit by a driver on phone he turned across me no signal nothing he said the usual he was to busy on the phone to his ear and one hand on the steering wheel I went over the top and slid about 40 ft to a standstill chuck the book at them it's getting worse in the uk as you say....
The problem, as I see it, is that currently you need to be spotted to get caught. Modern phones have enough technology in them to know when they are being used whilst moving so a better way of dealing with it is if they automatically switched off while in motion (or even better, self destructed).
Essentially, a car is a mobile Farady cage on wheels. An effort has to be made to make it transparent to EM waves. Why not just stop making the effort...
I agree Wozza, I have just finished my job in Saudi. Over there it is actually hard to see someone who is not on their phone whilst driving.
Did interviews with 14 radio stations across the country this morning all one after the other with 15 minutes allowed for each one. I was bloody knackered by the time we finished, but hey ho all in a good cause.
It can't recognise if you are driving or in the passenger seat, or on a bus, or a coach ..... If plod got out and actually started doing people for it then maybe it would stop being so prevalent. Sadly if the powers that be can't use a camera to do you and actually have to put boots on the ground they simply aren't interested as the cost is too high.
And there lies the problem, Traffic (sorry, roads policing ) is not deemed important enough or front line policing by many forces despite the fact that they tend to make more crime arrests and deal with more dead bodies in 1 year than your average superstar (sorry, CID officer) deals with in all their career. We no longer have a professional traffic department, and those that remain have been depleted to such an extent, it is token cover, so enforcement becomes a secondary issue. And yet they only have to prevent 1 fatal crash and that is over £1.5 million saved which is the current figure placed on every fatality. However, in respect of the technlogy, I have seen it used where the phone can determine whether the user is behind the wheel or not along with a whole lot of other clever technology, so the problems can be overcome, but for some reason they won't impement probably for fear of losing sales to their competitors.
If anyone is interested, this will give you a flavour of what was said. This was with BFBS Radio. The interviews with the other stations went pretty much along the same lines https://soundcloud.com/hudgellsolicitors/mobile-madness-using-your-phone-at-the-wheel
