Use your mobile device while driving? Think again!

What do MPs do?  Well, there is the obvious.  They talk about leaving the EU.  A lot.   I just wish they would use their creative thinking and get on and actually deliver what 17,410,742 voted for.  But they do much more than that.  They spend time in their constituencies dealing with problems and issues for constituents that no one else will touch.  And I take my hat off to them.  It’s not just a short term working in Westminster then a long holiday over the summer.  Far from it.  MPs get very little time for themselves.

So it was good to read about one of their many Committees, in this case the Commons Transport Select Committee, doing some impressive behind the scenes work.  And some of the facts they have uncovered are pretty sobering to say the least.   For example, an expert told the committee that taking a hands-free phone call caused "essentially the same" amount of distraction as being at the legal limit for alcohol blood level in England and Wales.   You read that correctly.   

Another fact.  Did you know that there were 773 casualties on Britain's roads in 2017, including 43 deaths and 135 serious injuries, in crashes where a driver using any kind of mobile device was a contributory factor?  Yes, 43 deaths because people couldn’t leave their mobile devices alone for a car journey.   43 bereaved families.  Were you one of them?

Incredibly, such is the lack of care and understanding of the fact that a car is a lethal weapon and it only takes a moments inattention to result in devastating consequences, that one in four people actually feel it is safe to use a mobile phone when behind the wheel in stationary traffic.  Being illegal doesn’t seem to bother people.  A 2016 study by scientists at the University of Sussex found conversations via hands-free devices caused some drivers to visually imagine what was being discussed.  Their focus was no longer on the road.   That incidentally doesn’t mean actually holding a mobile device.  It means using a mobile device.  Hands free included.   

As Joshua Harris of road safety charity Brake points out research and evidence shows clearly that using a hands-free phone is stupid at best and can lead to you committing a criminal act.  "It can impair a driver in the same way as a hand-held device and so it makes sense that the law treats these acts equally.  One moment's distraction from a phone can cause a lifetime of suffering so our advice to drivers is simple - when you're driving, make sure your phone is on silent and placed out of sight and out of reach" he said.    

A Department for Transport spokeswoman said: "Being distracted by a mobile phone while driving is dangerous and puts people's lives at risk. The law is clear that anyone driving dangerously is committing a criminal offence."   

Now these numbers and facts may just go over the top of your head.  They are not big.  But if it was your daughter or son that was the victim of such a crime would you not be raging that Parliament was allowing such an avoidable crime to happen?    

Well, the encouraging news is this Committee is now proposing, among other recommendations, that a hands-free phone ban for drivers 'should be considered'.  Sadly too late for some families.   

But for today, you and I can do one thing.  Don’t use our mobile devices hands free when driving.  You could just stop yourself from killing someone’s daughter or son.