muckles:
ROG:
muckles:
How many collisions are there that don’t involve phone use, where the cause is they didn’t see in time to react?Most are caused by a driver not concentrating on the task of driving but allowing themselves to be distracted
Exactly but they single out phones as a special case, but there are plenty of others things that distract drivers that aren’t singles out. When the law on mobile phones was first talked about a traffic copper friend of mine said it was pointless as they already had laws that could deal with people who used phones and making it a special case detracted from the other causes that distracted people.
Phone use used to be dealt with by the offence of the Driver not being in proper control of the vehicle.
As Magistrates no longer accept the word of a Police officer ( I am not getting into whether this is right or wrong) then the collection of evidence to prosecute a Driver for Molbile phone use - by even Fixed Penalty Notice - becomes more convoluted and therefore much less attractive to the officers on the ground.
It’s rapidly coming down to video / photographic evidence or forget it - hence the use of the Police HGV Truck.
As many other contributors have said, if you see a Traffic Cop on the Motorway it’s probably a mirage - his control room will probably accuse him of skivving or being lost!