Safe Speed Forums

All I can tell you is what I've observed myself:

BMW Man sitting less than a car length off my bumper (and it's not like I'm driving a puddle-jumper, I drive a 56-plate A4 Quattro) chattering mindlessly into his mobile phone.

White Van Man weaving about erratically all over the road. I decide to overtake because it minimises any hazard. As I tuck back in I see that he's got a phone glued to his ear and no hands on the wheel every time he changes gear - which coincides with him weaving.

Had a 17-ton truck pull straight out in front of me the other day on a roundabout. Driver had a mobile phone glued to his ear and didn't even bother looking over his right shoulder.

Just to give you 3 examples...

Well it looks as if Ford do think adding Bluetooth is a good idea - and obviously think adding Bluetooth is more important than replacing the "noise generators" :-

I am sure we must have all seen examples like these (they certainly annoy me) but .... as Paul effectively says above where is the evidence of increased accidents due to mobile use? Intuitively, I feel that safety must be compromised but perhaps it's just an annoying habit.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

one answer to that is that non-injury accidents aren't even reported to police.

Absolutely - we might have zillions of bumps caused or contributed to by mobile phones. But while thousands are dying, bumps don't matter much.

On the other hand, I can't really make sense of why mobile phones don't figure much in crash contributory factors.

I do see mobile phone drivers slowing down significantly. I wonder if they tend to slow down enough to compensate for the distraction?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I'll remember that next time I'm punted off my bike by someone not paying attention.

Injuries always matter and don't count as 'bumps'.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

i know from experiance, that prior to the the ban if i was on the phone my driving would suffer, never to the point of being really dangerous just to the same point that any other distraction could cause, the mobile issue is really just the government legislating as something must be done, and a shiney new law allows the daily mail set to feel safe and listened to

but the police aren't interested unless you need to be carted off to hospital.
Even then they couldn't give a !"%*£) (in London at least)
"we have decided to take no further action as the matter has been dealt with by the insurance company." - ie zero investigation and another accident noted down as smidsy in the statistics.

Sadly I agree that that's true - at least sometimes. But it is an entirely different issue.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

from the smh

That really is very interesting...

Here's the study itself: http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/185 ... 52_fm.html

It certainly looks properly constructed, as much as you ever can with respondent reporting.

It looks as if it supports 'common opinions' about hand held mobile phones in terms of near misses and crashes, but it's wildly at odds with DfT contributory factors (which is interesting).

There seems to a mobile phone near miss to crash ratio of about 3:1. That's very low (with 5:1 being the common minimum, and 10:1 being more common) and might indicate that mobile phone risks tend towards the very low end of the crash severity scale.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Personally, my concentration is a singular switching "spotlight". I'm switching between various roading focus points and the dash display. In the few times I tried to talk whilst driving, I found that my singular switching concentration was split 2/3-1/3. That is 2/3rds of a given concentration roundtrip time(between points) was being devoted to the phone call, and all those other points which are there always during driving were being crammed into that 1/3 space.

This horrified me, and I no longer talk whilst driving - and only take texts whilst sitting at a redlight.

Also again with personal experience, I have never seen a driver talking on a phone who wasn't driving with some impairment.

And when I say impairment I mean they are either driving along really really slowly, holding everyone up or they are obviously delayed in their braking reaction to the point where every brake action is a slam-on because of the extra distance covered after the person in front of them has braked. I also notice they often tend to lean to and fro from one side of the lane to the other rather than being balanced). I'm not making judgment on whether these impairments are dangerous, but rather simply pointing out they exist and that I've yet to see a phoner driving "normally".

Oh and btw hi! I just joined

-cc

So you saw 3 bad drivers and each time you had a look and saw that they were using their mobile phone.

Did you check the drivers of every other car you enountered but didn't do something stupid to see if they were using mobile phones or not. Is it not possible that these people would have been happily tailgating you or whatever even if they wern't on a call. Certainly the BMW stereotype has been around longer than mobile phones.


As I've said before, I pretty much have to take calls whilst driving as a result of how my job is set up (I'm a field engineer, and the only person in the company who can fix certain systems, which are installed at a small number of sites nationwide) and I dislike the new handsfree law intensely.

Firstly the sound quality of most of these kits, even the good ones, is below that which can be obtained by holding the phone to your ear, requiring increased concentration in order to be able to understand the call.

Secondly, I drive an automatic, and thus have plenty of time, especially on motorways to drink coffee or red bull and consume sweets. If you denied me these I'd be a far worse driver due to tiredness, especially on the longer trips. How come I'm allowed to hold a cup of hot liquid for 30 seconds, but not a phone. I know which one I'd rather not drop if a situation developed that needed both my hands on the wheel.

Thirdly, as Paul has stated, many businesses, especially mine have decided that since handsfree kits are specifically legal, they have bought them and expect their drivers to use them, bosses are now perfectly happy to phone their drivers at any time and for any reason, and don't feel obliged to keep it brief and to the point.


Also, to the OP who was campaigning for manufacturers to include bluetooth handsfree in more cars, how about campaigning to make it a requirement for hire firms to provide bluetooth handsfree. At least then, those who needs handsfee can pay for it, but when some muppet hits them anyway and they are stuck with a 1.0 Vauxhall Corsa for a month, they wont be tempted to hold the phone to their ear.

So you saw 3 bad drivers and each time you had a look and saw that they were using their mobile phone.

Did you check the drivers of every other car you enountered but didn't do something stupid to see if they were using mobile phones or not. Is it not possible that these people would have been happily tailgating you or whatever even if they wern't on a call. Certainly the BMW stereotype has been around longer than mobile phones.


As I've said before, I pretty much have to take calls whilst driving as a result of how my job is set up (I'm a field engineer, and the only person in the company who can fix certain systems, which are installed at a small number of sites nationwide) and I dislike the new handsfree law intensely.

Firstly the sound quality of most of these kits, even the good ones, is below that which can be obtained by holding the phone to your ear, requiring increased concentration in order to be able to understand the call.

Secondly, I drive an automatic, and thus have plenty of time, especially on motorways to drink coffee or red bull and consume sweets. If you denied me these I'd be a far worse driver due to tiredness, especially on the longer trips. How come I'm allowed to hold a cup of hot liquid for 30 seconds, but not a phone. I know which one I'd rather not drop if a situation developed that needed both my hands on the wheel.

Thirdly, as Paul has stated, many businesses, especially mine have decided that since handsfree kits are specifically legal, they have bought them and expect their drivers to use them, bosses are now perfectly happy to phone their drivers at any time and for any reason, and don't feel obliged to keep it brief and to the point.


Also, to the OP who was campaigning for manufacturers to include bluetooth handsfree in more cars, how about campaigning to make it a requirement for hire firms to provide bluetooth handsfree. At least then, those who needs handsfee can pay for it, but when some muppet hits them anyway and they are stuck with a 1.0 Vauxhall Corsa for a month, they wont be tempted to hold the phone to their ear.

Lum, you have my sympathy for having such a rotten, stressful job!

But the fact you find you need to use a mobile does NOT make it a safe thing to do, hands-free or other wise. I drove for a living before I retired and we were among the first to get cab phones that were hands-free, (pre mobiles). I only used it the once while moving and when I hung up, I realised I had no recollection of the 3-4 miles I had travelled, including a busy market town!

After that, I told anyone who rang that I'd ring back when safely parked. Not an easy place to find with a 38-ton tanker!

I see hundreds of 'wobbly' drivers on their mobiles. I honestly think it's the very worst invention in my lifetime.

I have no use for one.

I believe the reason having a phone conversation is worse than drinking a cup of coffee whilst driving is that, while driving and sipping are both motor functions, driving and conversing use two totally different areas of the brain. This is likely to be why even on handsfree it is so much more distracting.

If I was going through a busy market town then I wouldn't be on the phone. It's the motorway plods where I end up having to answer it.

Fortunately I seem to be able to maintain a straight line, safe distance and whatever speed I choose to drive at. I'm still not happy about it, and definately not happy that the new law has legitimised certain types of phone call. Previously I could get away with keeping the call short, wheras now bosses and customers alike expect me to fix their bloody computers over the phone right now.

Under the old rules, I would OMG hold the phone to my ear and if it seemed like a long call was going to happen, people were perfectly happy for me to call them back from the services (I'd usually tell them how many miles away it was) Sometimes I'd just put the phone down in the ashtray with the call still connected and pick it up just to update them as to how many miles I had to go.

I really have no issue with the second case. It's the long drawn out calls that bother me. Sure I'll stop at the services when I reach one, but that still means I've been on the phone for the last 20 miles.

I do still tell people to hold for a few minutes when I anticipate a tricky situation developing, sometimes doing the IAM commentry thing to make them realise that I'm actually trying to drive a car here. Occasionaly they'll offer to call back later, but not often these days.

I guess like anything, it's a skill which has to be learned. If it were always unsafe all the time, then surely the police with their two way radios and taxis with their CBs would be equally screwed.

I think the thing with the police, etc., is that they don't hold 'conversations' as such, just brief replies. Same with CB, non-essential and can be stopped at any time.

If you think you drive safely, fairy snuff, but I bet millions can't!


My experience with the hands-free above stems back to the early days of 'phoning on the hoof', and there was not much experience of the side-effects. As I said, I went through the town without realising it, not started talking in the town.

Did you hit anyone in the town?

I'm sure if something eventful happened you would have realised it.

Still, I suppose the whole auto pilot thing is bad, but then on long motorway slogs do people not go into auto pilot anyway?