“In four years Mike van Erp has filmed 1,400 drivers using their phones, leading to 1,800 penalty points, £110,000 of fines — and him being assaulted by disgruntled motorists. Is he a road safety hero or just a darned nuisance? Nick Rufford joins him on patrol”
I’ve watched a few of his videos. I should be surprised that he catches so many drivers in their phones, but in and around London? Not surprised at all.
That I don’t know. However, using a hand held phone in a traffic jam is certainly hazardous, as my Houston ramming incident demonstrated. (CyclingMikey has also several videoed incidents of people driving very badly in traffic jams while using hand held phones, putting vulnerable road users such as pedestrians at risk).
Personally I think all mobile phone use behind the wheel should be banned including hands-free, but legislation is often the art of the possible and lines have to be drawn somewhere (e.g. why is the speed limit in urban areas 30 mph, not 31 or 35 or 25? At some point someone has to draw that line. Enforcability would also be a factor, and when considering a change in the law, and it would be very hard to enforce a ban on hands free phone use).
Hands-free phone calls have been shown to cause additional risk, much more so than just talking to a passenger (there are a number of reasons why this is so, some of it is the brutal compression from the codec reducing intelligibility added to the limited audio bandwidth also reducing intelligibility, which means more mental effort must be spent on a phone call than just talking to a passenger). Using a hands free phone at 60 mph might be less likely to be a factor in a crash than going on Instagram heads down on a hand held phone in a traffic jam, but risk = probability x consequences and the consequences of having a distraction incident at 60 mph will be more severe even if the probability is lower.
I think we don’t take driving as seriously as we should, we put vulnerable 3rd party road users in a lot of danger by not devoting our full attention to driving. Everyone Mikey catches quite honestly deserves what they got - if they can’t take driving seriously they need to have their driving licences taken away. If you can’t resist the temptation to use your phone turn the damn thing off and put it in your bag in the back seat.
There’s not much here that I really disagree with - don’t mistake my position on this issue, I’m not trying to argue that it’s okay to use phones while driving.
The main thing really bothering me is that you very quickly brushed past the fact that if the law was truly designed to maximize safety, they would outlaw the use of handsfree phones.
Doesn’t that bother you? The knowledge that the law, ostensibly for public safety, has been compromised without a really compelling reason?
And the “enforcability” argument is really weak, IMO - there are countless laws on the books which are difficult to enforce, some much moreso than the use of handsfree devices while driving, and it hasn’t stopped those from being implemented and prosecuted.
The real reason, and it’s the same reason as to why 2-way radios are allowed, is because it would negatively impact businesses, and business is far more important to the UK government than the lives of it’s citizens.
No, two way radios are by and large used by the police, ambulance and fire (and certainly when it comes to the police, they like to exempt themselves from legislation they find inconvenient - e.g. for the longest time, motorcycle visor tints were illegal unless you were the police in which case they were just fine!)
Also, alas, politics/legislation is the art of the possible, and perfect is the enemy of the good. Doing nothing because it would be politically impossible to ban all phone use while driving is a worse state of affairs than at least banning handheld phone usage. Of course it bothers me as I’m frequently a vulnerable road user (I own several motorcycles, and do all my local journeys on a pushbike or walk, and I’ve been hit by drivers whose standard of observation has been piss poor) but at the same time I have to recognise that at least a ban on handheld phone use will reduce my chance of getting hit, even if (at the moment) all phone usage isn’t banned, and so while it is not perfect it is better than nothing. And more power to Mikey for dobbing people in.
If the intent was to exempt emergency services then they would have exempted emergency services.
Two way radios are primarily used by taxi firms.
And your last point is weak, there are infinite possibilities we have between the status quo and nothing at all. Clearly I’m not arguing that there should be a free for all on phone use while driving.
Very few taxi firms, the practise has largely died out. I can’t tell you the last time I got into a taxi with a handheld radio in it. One taxi firm here still has a large dipole on the roof of their building, but AFAIK they no longer use it.