Safe Speed Forums

But while you're busy nicking millions of mobile phone drivers, you won't be nicking drunks, stolen car drivers, unlicenced, banned, uninsured 'rogue' drivers.

The crash stats say that mobile phones are generally a misuse of your time.

And don't give me the 'they deny it so it doesn't show in the stats' baloney. It could be true in low level crashes, but it's certainly not true in fatals, where 0.5% of crashes involved any driver on the mobile phone compared with 2.5% of drivers in the general traffic.

How come mobile phones are under-represented in the fatal crash stats?

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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

My time is spent driving round looking for drink drivers at the appropriate times of the day, along with intelligence lead policing for the disqualified drivers who are in stolen cars or both.

Fact that whilst I am doing this I see drivers, driving round at 20mph in a 30mph,pulling out of junctions, in front of other drivers, hogging the middle lane of Dual carriageway/ motorways, whilst using there mobile phones, so, what do I do dont worry people I am not interested in you or your poor standard of driving, just carry on I have to try and catch more important criminals.

In case everyone has forgotten my role is to make the roads safer al round and a proactive approach to this is better than a reactive approach I dont deal in statistics I deal in what I see when I am driving my own car whilst not at work, coupled with what I see at work.

And quite honestly the average motorists standard of driving these days without a mobile phone to there ear is appauling let alone having one stuck to there ear. All the enforcing I do is done in a fully liveried police vehicle, not in unmarked and yes, the great british motorist who can drive and use a phone alledgedly still gets caught then when they get caught redhanded still scream persecution.

At the end of the day its an offence to use a mobile phone whilst driving with it in your hand, and thats that the introduction of points is due to the poor attitude from the motorist who just wont adhere to the law and pull over to use it, so this is the end result and we / the motorist have only themselves to blame, there is no use in trying to justify why motorist should get away with it.

What it needs is for some of you do gooders to come out for a couple of shifts, and really see how hard it is too deal with some of the routine day to day jobs that have the potential to kill or seriously injure one another on a daily basis.

I take pride in what I do in road safety and I can assure you its not done with the government in mind simply to stop normal human beings ruining each others lifes, enough said.
Stephen

This twaddle comes from a so called professional bunch of drivers - who's record on driving within the speed limit is excused as a job requirement. In my day the police led by example - not by excuse. "DO AS WE DO WAS THE MOTTO"--and in thosedays they GOT respect as earned , not out of fear- where they drove in the limits ,and used discretion - bit like somewhere in the north east --place called DURHAM, from what i hear.

So long as your efforts are focused on standards of driving, you'll get a big thumbs up from me.

But that's not what the new law does.

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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

Botach, why do you always attack individual people's point of view with a generalisation of what you perceive the police to be like, if you want a slanging match then sorry, I dont do that, so go find someone who will take the bait.
Stephen

Paul,
The laws set in stone so to speak unfortuneately its the interpretation along with the application thats wrong sometimes.
Stephen

I loathe Handy with vengeance.. from naff ring tones in middle of opera performance or soiree at the Theatre on the Lake .. to the twazak who almost drive or ride or walk into danger whilst engaged in meaningless "yup dear.. I shall buy some mushrooms on way home"!

I applaud und want the Stephens IanHs, und the IGs und the PH-ers silveryback michaels, gones Weirdest nevilles und dibbles und other BiBs out there nailing the twazaks who really cannot drive or ride any bike .. motorised or on the pedalo..


Und when you see these Handy phone users wobbling along on bicycles... weaving und heading head -on at you in their cars.. failing to COAST anything .. 100% of them not very safe.. ist then you hope a will lurk und make them

We do have handy free. Look .. No hands!

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Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

And it is good that you do something about these people!
But it could be done even if 'driving while using phone' wasn't illegal...

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Andrew.

Laws like the 'enhanced' mobile phone law make it far too easy to forget the real objective and prosecute large numbers of folk for 'technical' offences.

I wouldn't expect proper police traffic officers to do that, because there's plenty of bad driving out there and you might as well spend your time doing a 'real' safety job rather than a techincal illegality one.

It's all about best allocation of scarce resources. Your judgement about where your efforts will help is about a million times better than the definitions provided in law.

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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

Not attacking - unless that's your point of view -in my day police led by example - education and showing how to drive - not hiding behind lamposts. If you got stopped - you had been "Naughty" - and got a lecture or done. The standards of professional police were exemplary - nowadays we see police trying any excuse to get round the limits - yet police of "ye olde days " could drive within the limits and excuse MOP whose speed was moderately in excess, if driving well.
If Police wish to be called " professional " - then they should obey the law, and earn the respect, and respect those who might exceed the limit, but drive well,and if in their view go a bit "daft" then reign them in .
Those days of enforcement ( an from your posts ) all help from the public seems to have gone too.
The police NEED to get public response and respect back. The way to do it is by listening to complaints/ sarcasm / coments - and reacting - not by switchng off/ looking for someone who is trying to take the pis - but makng a valid point. My local force are doing it. Perhaps Traffic could do it too.

Paul, this is the first time I have ever disagreed with your POV!

I don't know what it's like in your lightly trafficked neck of the woods, but where I live, if a vehicle is being driven in a poor manner, eg, wandering, hesitance, pulling out in front of oncoming traffic, driving too slowly in an NSL etc., you can bet your bottom dollar they're ON THEIR F***ING MOBILE!!!!
Fortunately, you can usually spot them a mile off.

Bring on the new regs.

(It would be great if the mobile phone was designed not to work in a moving vehicle, or the vehicle could give out some form of interference!)

I'll be more than happy to see everyone using a phone get 3 points. No 'phone call is that important.

When the really stupid ones do it four times they'll need to walk (alright, I know about banned drivers still driving) whereas before they just paid their fine (probably) and carried on regardless.

I think anyone who drives (or rides a motorcycle in my case) in the lawless badlands of Central London knows just how many people ignore the laws regarding 'phones, seatbelts, and fog lights.

I see at least two people every day with their front fog lights on, no seatbelt, and chatting on their 'phone. With such scant regard for the 'minor' laws what do you think the chances of them being safe drivers are? (or having insurance, tax, MOT, or even a licence).

Mike.

(sorry for being a bit ranty but this really gets my goat)

I've had much the same experience, but I've never seen a crash. There's little room for doubt that mobile phone crashes are under-represented in the crash stats, and especially so in fatalities.

So it's very hard to see how moving resources away from other road safety activity towards mobile phone driving can possibly make an improvement.

I suspect that the bottom line is that mobile phone driving is ugly rather than dangerous.

The science (and there's plenty of it, but none of it digs very deep) points to very substantial dangers, but if those dangers don't appear in the crash stats then the science isn't good enough.

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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

oh well, that proves it then. ffs, how often do you SEE a crash? I think I've actually seen 3 in the past 20 years.


no, its most definitely dangerous.


nobody has the complete crash stats. As Stephen has pointed out, nobody is going to admit using a mobile after the fact, just like they're not going to admit they were arguing with the kids/spouse or fiddling with the radio or something. It doesn't make these actions any less dangerous just because a death hasn't resulted.

I suspect the reason it does not appear in the statistics is that most of the problems occur at roundabouts etc. where the speeds tend to be lower and so the crashes are non-injury. If that is the case it's probably only the insurance companies that get notified.

Having been in the car with someone who seems to be permanently on the 'phone I have not experienced anywhere near the number of scary moments since he got a car with a hands free kit. He used to hold the phone in his right hand whilst trying to change gear with his left and steer round a roundabout with his knee (sadly I am not exagerating ). At least now he still has basic control of the vehicle even though his concentration must be compromised.

There is no excuse whatsoever for using a hand held mobile when hands free kits are so cheap now.

from El Reg



my bold... now, what was that about the stats again?

Taking a totally different angle...

I actually believe that our new system of contributory factors is really rather good. It's probably the best in the world.

Shouldn't we use it to ensure that scarce road safety resources are allocated in proportion to the more frequent and more dangerous contributory factors?

[And I really don't believe that the 'denial after the fact' argument holds water because of the degree of investigation in high severity crashes.]

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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

So in your ideal world it would be impossible to perfectly legally be on the phone as a passenger,

13 fatals. And the road death investigation manual demands that phone records are checked. That's 0.4% of fatal crashes against 2.5% of drivers on the phone in the traffic. That's a 6 fold under-representation. Why does that happen?

The government is so certain that they are right that they don't believe their own data - instead they would like to prove their data wrong. A better idea would be to revise the beliefs to match the data AND go for better data.

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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

what if there's a few million non-fatal crashes? It seems like you're saying we should just ignore those because nobody happened to get killed.