Mobile phones and driving .... rant

Coming home on the M4 this morning, I past 4 lorries on mobile phone's I knew 2 of them where on the phone as the driving was rather erratic as coming over in to my lane !! until I flashed the lights and hit the horn just makes me mad as the speed everyone is going it doesnt take much to cause a accident plus everywhere soaking wet

Rant over....

Spruce

 

I've seen it loads of times, and it really winds me up. Studies show it can be even worse than being over the drink drive alcohol limit.

More than once I've nearly been run over by cars where the driver was on the phone. On one occasion I actually had to dive out of the way, ON THE PAVEMENT, because some woman in a 4x4 was so engrossed in her phone conversation that she apparently forgot that cars should be on the road. She didn't even stop. Just continued on down the road.

i could go on with quite a few specific examples of near misses, but that would make for a long post.

The trouble is the law is a farce when it comes to all things motoring related. If you get caught using your phone while driving, its a whopping £35 fine (I think) and up to 3 points on your license. That's some deterrent I must say. And what if you actually kill someone by ramming your vehicle into them while you're on your phone? Well then its 'causing death by dangerous driving', you'll get a ban for that one, and possibly even a couple of years in one of Her Majesty's Hotels.

 

It's a disgrace. Instant suspension of your licence if caught, I'd say. And when it comes to proof, couldn't all those cameras come in handy?

When you consider you'd get a £30 fine just for parking in slightly the wrong place, hardly life-threatening, it's hard not to think the weighting is all wrong.

 

Proof should be quite easy once you suspect someone has done it. Every time you go out of range of one phone mast, and at intervals regardless, your mobile phone does a 'cell search'. It sends strikes up an electronic conversation with all the masts in range, and then they decide which mast will best serve you if you need to make or receive a call. That means that as long as your phone is switched on and in range of ANY mast, the phone company always knows where, geographically, your phone is.

This information can be used by the coppers when investigating serious crimes. They can ask the courts to order the phone company to give out these records.

I don't like the idea of a police state, big brother and all that, but I can't see the problem with the coppers having access to your phone's location records when investigating a wider range of crimes. Then, lets say someone says they saw me on my phone on the M1 between junctions 36 and 35 southbound (for example - I use that example because I can visualise that stretch of road from my many journeys home when I lived in Sheffield). I say 'no mate, honest gov, weren't me gov'. Currently neither side can prove it. What if the coppers could then turn round and say 'your phone was involved in a call lasting x minutes and y seconds, and the masts it used place you somewhere within a mile of junction 35 of the M1'. That would make it much harder to deny, and conversely, if someone has been wrongly accused, then a quick check of the phone records would show that their phone never made or received a call at the stated time.

Of course this all falls apart as soon as there is a passenger in the vehicle, because you can just say the passenger used your phone (loads of times I've asked my wife to make or receive calls on my phone while I've been driving), but if even half the cases led to prosecutions, it might act as a deterrent for the rest.

 

It sure would, nobody seems to take it at all seriously. Just like speeding offences until they started catching us all at it. That certainly slowed me down like nothing else. Took half the fun out of driving as well but that would hardly apply to putting a stop to phone abuse. Can't afford to burn up the petrol now, anyway.

I believe I've read that the most important aspect of behaviour control is not the severity of the consequence but the certainty of getting caught.

 

Life is full of risks and consequences. My view of whether a risk is worthwhile or not is partly about balancing up the possible rewards against consequences.

There's a tree in our local park that I'm sometimes tempted to climb. The risk is that I'll fall. The risk is low but the consequence is potentially severe. I could render myself unable to work for a while, unable to pay my mortgage, and therefore lose everything I've built up. The reward would be good, but not that good. On balance, its not worth the risk.

Motoring is the same. Unfortunately for some, the law is the only thing they consider. I would consider the risk of using my mobile while driving, is that I could have an accident and destroy some family, possibly my own. The reward is that I'd get to have my phone chat. On balance the risk is not worth it. Some people look at it differently. For some the risk is they'll be made to pay a fine equating to less than the cost of a night out, and the reward is they remain socially (or in business), right in the loop.

 

Even more amazing, Spruce, considering "hands free" is now all part and parcel of having a mobile phone and yet people still choose not to use it

 

A friend of mine would report it,but,

One day he seen someone using he's moblie when driving, yes, he rang the police and reported the person, reg and make of car etc, then the car behind him put on the blue's and two's and pulled him over for using he's moblie, the car behind him was unmark police car and seen the two of them using moblies, my friend got a fine and points and the police then went to the house of the other car driver and had the same

 

I think I've also read that even a hands-free kit is not as low-risk as not making any call at all. After all, the brain is still engaged on a conversation which bears no relation to the driving situation with a person who is not aware of the driving conditions at the time. So the driver is mentally absent from the scene whilst making the call. It's also worse than chatting with a passenger who can see the same road conditions as you.

 

Its not just about the passenger seeing the same road conditions, its a clever feature of the human brain.

The audio that comes out of a mobile phone has been digitally compressed, transmitted, and then restored to something like its original form so that we can understand it as people's voices. Except a huge amount of the signal is ditched during the compression process. That's ok, because our brains are brilliant and taking some of a signal and patching up the gaps based on experience, except to do this it has to work a lot harder. That's why it takes more concentration to hold a conversation on the phone than it would if the person was really there.

 

The reason why so few are caught now is mainly due to texting, this is done with the phone in the lap so they are not seen holding their mobile. You can see them at traffic lights as their head bobs up and down!

 

I struggle to text anyone when I'm sitting at a desk doing nothing else, how they manage to do it while driving is beyond me.

 

same here Pete , my average text is 3 words long , and It only takes me 10 minutes now

 

The younger folk have evolved. Lots of people who were late teens early 20s in the mid 80s had to struggle to operate game controllers with their thumbs while holding them in their hands. As prowess was measured by one's ability to slaughter the maximum number of zombies/baddies on Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem etc, and that required a subtle mutation allowing unusual thumb dexterity, they were favoured when it came to selection for breeding. Their offspring naturally have this mutation of very agile thumbs, and so can hit a WPM count that would impress Mavis Beacon, all on a 2 inch capacitive touchscreen.

 

Mavis Beacon?
Wasn't she in Coronation Street?