Safe Speed Forums

On Thursday - Vine's R2 prog did a special on the second anniversary of the mobile phone law - and his scouts up and down the country were reporting seeing dozens of drivers still using hands held phones.

Callers to the prog had mixed views - some proclaiming it to be a daft law as "changing a CD and smoking are far more dangerous and involve taking eyes off the road!" Trie - but no more in reality than glancing in rear mirrors or looking at the dash - and we all look at the the dash a heck of a lot more when in scamming land - - which is why we can argue that the scams distract so much - especially in low margin areas like Lancs

Many did mention this in their calls as well - which should be of interest to us - they look at speedos more in scam areas - from both pro and contra "handy" phone abuse.

However, the nitty gritty of the prog has to be Mary Brake Williams guest appearance. I agree, with her in this instance, that the law on mobile phone laws needs tightening - and many contributing by e-mail and calls said the £30 fine was no deterrent anyway and arguing that even hands free whould be outlawed as the threat to driver concentration as some peoplel get over involved in their calls and conversations and it seems the phone records count against in case of accident as well. per this programme...


However, where I think she fell over into the abysss of the silliness we come to expect from this lady is in one of her other comments:

She wants to see talking to passengers banned as well

How the hell do you prove this - and what about an advanced driver talking him or herself through the unexpected hazard from hell to focus attention on it?

Or what if you hum and sing along to the classical music - proven in a US experiment to aid concentration, calm anger?

Have a lovely CD in my car at the moment - for the youngest of my children "Music for Minors" - lots of fun, fairly lively classical music and nursery rhymes music in classical style (surprisingly stimulating actually! Actually very good and recommended for anyone with kids! )

But if Mary has her way - she wants to ban all this.

Politically correct nonsense!

Hands held mobile phones are one thing - as is getting far too engrossed in a conversation via hands free kit - but trying to ban chit chat in car and listening to Classic FM and inspiring choice of in-car music is unenforceable madness!

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Please, please, please tell me your joking as that's the funniest thing I have heard in a long while. Talking to a passenger is surely a good thing(or at worst safety neutral), isn't it? It keeps concentration levels up and prevents boredom with the added benefit of being able to tell when you need to concentrate so as not to go "hello, hello, you there" if you momentarily break off a conversation. Fair enough having a domestic in the car isn't good, but that shouldn't mean we need a ban on talking to passengers!

I wish I was joking!

If you go to the Beeb's web site and click the listen again option - I caught this debate about 1.15 pm when I was taking a lunch break. Vine was incredulous and even asked how one could possibly enforce this and got the same waffle we know and love from this lady.



I know she and her pals must lurk on this site in particular so

...Mary, love -

if you're reading (or your mates are reading) - you really do your cause no favours with this - and you may say you are not motivated by grief. I think you still hurt badly over the incidents which promoted your founding of Brake.

As you know - we lost one of ours in similar circumstances and I nearly lost my wife in another freak incident. But we do not blame every driver in the world for it - just the ones concerned. We were appalled at the justice system in Ferdl's case for the record and we are are on friendly speaking terms with the widow of the person who hit my wife after being taken fatally ill at the wheel. He complained of feeling ill that morning - he underestimated the scale of his ill feelings - may even have thought he'd "pull himself together" once on way to work. How can either myself or my wife hate him in reality? As you are aware - my wife did recover to normal health and a normal life - she loves driving and does enjoy driving fast - on track, in rallies and on motorways.

I applaud your help and some success in tackling rogue garages and rogue hauliers, agree with you over mobile phones, fatigue, drink, drugs and support your comments over being careful about following medical and pharmaceutical advice over prescribed medicines - but I distanced myself from your organisation over one or two issues - one being general daftness over focussing solely on speed and placing such blind faith in a speed camera at the expense of true professional in the form of real and professionally and safety led cops and such naff comments as the one uttered on the Vine prog!

Does not help and only makes Brake look very silly

So if you are lurking Mary - please accept that COAST/ Green Cross /PARC/ POWER Code are better safety messages than all of yours.


And OK - courtesy of Paul himslf , IG, Ian H, Stephen and other BiB on board here - think we have some sound advice on safety on this site - and IG seems to have addressed many cycling issues - most of which inform and help all road users.

So I reckon Paulie should receive an OBE at the very least for his efforts in promoting road safety

Hell would freeze over hopefully before you become Damn Mary!

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Just listened to it........ you really aren't joking

As you know I'm a Truck Driver, and I am always being told off for picking up trade platers, these are usually the most trustworthy hitch hikers you can pick up.
Anyway, I always find the journey goes along a lot better with a passenger to talk to, I am more relaxed, and more observant.
Chatting in cars and trucks can IMO be a boon to road safety.

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So what about CB radios and the like. For some reason these were not classed as dangerous so were not banned even though you have to hold the mike in your hand while you are talking Oops the emergency services use them so it would cost too much to change their communications equipment. Thats OK then.

The only "talking" I object to is when you are following a car and the driver is chatting to the passenger but also LOOKS AT THEM WHILE TALKING I see it time and time again.

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Speed camera policy Kills

You can make the laws as tough as you like, but if there's no-one to enforce them it makes no difference. And, as far as I know, neither SPECS, GATSOs or an LTI 20/20 can pick this problem up despite being safety cameras(!).
Take some consolation; as I have mentioned in a previous posting, some of the few BiB actually out there prosecute phone users for careless driving, so it's a Magistrate Court job with points.

And that's why this law was never needed in the first place.
If someone is driving without due care and attention by using a mobile phone or for any other reason, then prosecute them for just that, produce the evidence of the due care and attention and have done with it.
The mobile phone law must be just about the only 'daylight only' law in existance - you can't detect it in the dark in most cases.

Hell, you can't even reliably detect it during the day! Apolgies for having mentioned this before but in the absence of our hands free kits Mrs Gatsobait could easily conceal one of those earpiece on a cable jobs under her hair and drive with her phone in her coat pocket. How could a copper tell if she's on the phone or singing along to the radio or just mad and talking to herself? Being a baldy I'd be easy enough to spot, but even I could have got away with it during my heavy metal phase (wanted hair like Bruce Dickinson but had to settle for a godawful mullet-a-like ).

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Some are so small they can be cradled in the palm of ones hand. To an onlooker passing by it appears as if the user is just resting their head on their hand.

The mobile phone law seems quite bonkers to me. It is very speciffic on the definition of what is a mobile phone.
If you don't have to hold it in your hand to use it then it's ok (including someone else holding the phone to your ear I guess) and if it works on a frequency other than the ones listed then it's also fine. It doesn't seem to list the Tetra frequencies so if/when businesses other than the police get to use the tetra system they can use a tetra handset while driving, legally. CB and Amature radio are legal to use, even if connected to a telephone type handset or using a morse key!
Corded and cordless headsets are ok, as long as you don't have to hold the phone to use it (eg. pressing buttons while it's in your pocket it ok)

The law doesn't seem to have a point. Other than maybe easy prossecution of drivers... hmmmm....

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Andrew.

Gesture politics?

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Good grief, have we really had this nonsense for two years. I thought it was only inflicted on us WEF from 1st December 2004. How time flies!

Best wishes all,
Dave - expecting a blast from Vrenchen or Ted, or some combination thereof.

You know us to well Triple Liebchen!

It came in 2003 - und ist still a problem. I have never, as you been able ti understand why ist so important to be contacted 24.7 for everyone. Mad Doc ist always aware he can be called back to his patients - even as lofty consultant wally - but his job involve real ife und death in black und white - so ist a bit different

Even so - he has never used hand held und reluctanly will use handy free if he has to.

But I hate them all with vengeance. Calls in my L2 und L3 und L4 - have to concentrate hard und find also they take mind off road even in L1 - so even the hand free ist restricted to "absolute emergency as last resort" for me!

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Well folks that was a fairly mild 'blast' from the docile kitten out in the North West Territory, was it not? I reckon she's beginning to realise that she's not on quite such solid ground as she thought with her anti-handy stance.

Best wishes all,
Dave - not entirely hopeless at multi-tasking.

She's in her Christmas mood! If you use a "handy" as she calls them - in front of her in a restaurant - she'll grab it off you and threaten to drop it in the soup! The steely-iced glare's enough to freeze you though! Apparently - she does use it on the road so the Mad Doc tells me! Very - very effective!

But - really - holding anything in your hand can impair handling your vehicle - especially at speed - and the problem with both hands free and hands held - the person on the other end cannot see the road and hazards - which is why it's different to talking to passenger in car deflty pressing the play button on the car stereo/radio doo-dah. Also people do tend to get over engrossed in their conversations.

Now you can argue (as folks do ) that when we are in our cars we are in contact with "base camp" - but there's a difference -when we are in pursuit - we ain't gas-bagging - we are more or less talking ourselves through the road conditions and hazards and relaying it to base. It's not the same thing as talking about the profit margin on whatever and debriefing the boss on a meeting with a client or just chatting away or to the girlfriend.

Do I use one? I have a hands free and work can demand my use of it. In private motoring - like to have a break from all that so I switch it off and drive "normally and - um - er - um closer to the speed limit than nomal

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Its another one of the ill conceived 'something must be done' laws!

Whats wrong with dangerous or careless driving?

[quote="In Gear]
...holding anything in your hand can impair handling your vehicle - especially at speed...[/quote]

Yes in many situations it will be detrimental to proper control, I have never denied that.

On that very point though, do you recall the 'Traffic Cops' programme a few weeks ago where Bob Horton (was it?) of the Cheshire Constabulary was in pursuit mode through a housing estate.

He was single crewing, so he had to drive the car and hang on to the radio at the same time. The single handed steering while driving quickly round the tight corners of a housing estate looked distinctly inappropriate to me. With all due respect to his specialised training, I would say that amounted to 'not in proper control' of the vehicle.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

I realise that this post may well fall under the 'wasting my time' category, but..

Bearing in mind the job the police do, isn't it right and proper that there really is one rule for the untrained us, and another for them?
I am amazed and astounded as to why folks seem to think this shouldn't be so.

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Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical, liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

If the government, having considered the subject, had decided that there wasn't a need for a specific law against hand-held mobile use, it would have in effect given the green light to every chav and dozy bint in the country to use them all the time while at the wheel, and the situation would have been far worse than it is at present.

I know several people who, after the law was passed, said "ooh, I suppose I'd better stop doing that then."

It could have been effectively outlawed by vigorous use of the careless driving law, once a precedent had been established, but that would just have been another means of achieving the same end.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed