Tubbysboy:
So none of any of us on here has texted / whatsapp/ emailed while driving ■■?
I think it’s bloody awful for all involved, but… and I think it’s a big but…
There for the grace of god go I…
We all know it’s wrong, but we still do it, and I don’t think many people can honestly say they haven’t either…
Yes if it was music searching or whatever kind of makes it worse, but the principle is the same.
I think the phone manufacturers should make the hand sets automatically blocked when the phone is traveling over a certain speed, thus removing the temptation…
No great help to the devasted family involved…
You are quite correct when you say some of us have never text etc while driving because some of us are not weak minded and realise the dangers of doing such stupid things whilst driving.
Unfortunately a lot of drivers cannot obey the law or do not want to obey the law because they think they are capable of driving whilst on the phone or breaking speed limits or bullying other drivers by driving too close and that is why we are all having to be controlled by more and more electronics and soon by driverless vehicles.
These selfish ignorant arrogant people should be put off the road for good.
You are also correct when you say it is no help to the devastated family but you can guarantee some driver reading this will be on his phone tomorrow thinking it will never happen to them.
fatboystu1:
The driver has got off lightly in my opinion. As someone said earlier the whole weight of the law should have been directed at him including the fact he tried to blame vehicle failure.
What can we do about it? Unfortunately until the punishment fits the crime people will still continue to use phones etc whist driving.
It’s a sad vision of attitudes in this country where, if you were to hand out say, instant 6 month bans+ £500 fine+ removal of vehicle for using a phone while driving people would be up in arms saying goes we should be catching “proper criminals”. What is a proper criminal? In my eyes anyone who breaks a law is a criminal and should be punished. And let’s face it, we’ve all bent the rules slightly at some point or another.
I mean, too many leftie wet liberals talk about prison these days as a rehabilitation process!!! My arse, it should be about punishment as a future deterrent. And there in lies the crux of my point and that of others on here. Make the punishment a deterrent to commit the offence in the first place.
toby1234abc:
It is your duty to report these cretins.
Were you posing like Kitchener when you posted that? It’s my duty as a professional driver to not do the aforementioned things. It’s not my duty to be a police informer.
remember when your about to inform on these perpertraters of evil to pull off the road onto private property,handbrake on,out of gear,switch off the engine and take the keys out of the ignition before getting on the blower to grass them up…best sit on the passenger seat as well to be on the safe side.a Manchester to London and return should only take you about 3 weeks at that rate…the majority don’t care…hence the majority just use mobiles when driving .who cares?
toby1234abc:
Next time you are in a 50 mph average speed camera road works, count how many trucks are tailgating motorists to bully them out of their way by driving two feet away from their back bumper.
I’m sorry to say it’s trucks doing this and must be thick as wood, there is no time to react and stop when it goes mammaries up.
It is your duty to report these cretins to their employers to make sure they don’t kill all of your family so they can gain two minutes on their journey .
It is UK trucks doing it, not foreigners .
What about the car drivers who race up the outside before cutting infront of the lorry and slamming their brakes on, all because they want to leave at the next exit and don’t want to wait behind a lorry? Who do we report those to?
Looking at the Mail website today and there seems to be bit of a witch hunt against lorry drivers. The fact is, driving standards have fallen hugely across the board in recent years.
Sinse the flood of immigrant drivers got here it has got a lot worse .lhd lorries .Drivers who can buy a licence where they come from ,car drivers included .time all non brits had to pass our tests imo.
dieseldog999:
so where do you draw the line…some may say that most professional truckies would be able to multitask,full auto,criuse control etc…whereas…how competent is your usual scattererbrained wifey that you pass day in and out on the mobile in a flap because she just noticed that someone else never liked her latest brats pic on faceache.i don’t see why truckies or any other “professional”(excuse me while I laugh up my sleeve at that description) should be crucified more than joe blogs the car driver…we drive well over 10 times the miles with 10 times the road usage of the private dude,isnt there an argument that 12 points shouldn’t get you a ban if your a truckie?
dieseldog999,your not an ozzie by any chance are you [truckie]sounds the kind of thing an Australian would say
Don’t dare lump me in with the full on bulls**t that he’s spouting about this. I usually take what he says with a pinch of salt, but this is [zb] ridiculous. We’ve got some rednecks driving trucks over here, but most of us don’t think like him.
DeputyDog sure is barking, but he does tell it like it is, a reality check!. And he does make a valid point about points; I had 6 points on the licience a 48 & a 53 on trunk roads, probably 200,000 miles between them, did that put me at the same level of incompetence as the woman down the road with 6 points who is doing 2k a year taking the kids to school. May be removal of points should have a distance element attached to them.
(my licence has been fully clean for over 10 years now)
More Ale:
I use Google Maps because I’m too tight to buy a truck nav, but the screen goes blank after 10 minutes. My phones’ standby mode is off yet I still have to tap/swipe the screen to keep it displayed. Strictly illegal but then so is the old way of holding a map whilst driving, which the Daily Fail still hasn’t campaigned about.
What on Earth does a professional driver need with a Satnav on their PHONE?
Surely you can use Google Earth to plan a trip before you actually leave base, assuming you’re going somewhere in a new “Neck of the woods”…?
“Distractions in the Cab” cause accidents, of which even “Glancing at a flashing mobile screen” is one from many of.
My phone will be in my bag, or face down at the other end of the dashboard, so the lighting up doesn’t catch my attention. It doesn’t jingle to incoming texts (silent) and I don’t have it buzzing either.
Once at a destination, and safely on the bay THEN I’ll pick it up and check for missed calls, etc.
Winseer:
… is the old way of holding a map whilst driving, which the Daily Fail still hasn’t campaigned about.
Probably because there will be people out there below a certain age who wouldnt even know what a map looked like!
A bit like books, vhs tapes, cassettes and eton twin splitters (whatever the ■■■■ that is. I must look it up some time…) some generations are just spoiled
Winseer:
… is the old way of holding a map whilst driving, which the Daily Fail still hasn’t campaigned about.
Probably because there will be people out there below a certain age who wouldnt even know what a map looked like!
A bit like books, vhs tapes, cassettes and eton twin splitters (whatever the [zb] that is. I must look it up some time…) some generations are just spoiled
ITs not just the young generation the amount of times I see oldboy Van drivers chatting away on there phone its outrageous no one gives a crap.
I always get called up manically by transport office but I would never talk on the phone to them I just pull over for at the next service for 15 minutes and get £3.17 for my troubles happy days.
I’ve been sent out with two different drivers in recent days, ostensibly to train them up/familiarise them with what we do (and how we do it) as they are new to us from the agency. I had to request both of them to put their phones away while driving. One of them seemed to be intent on checking for the location of Keyfuels filling stations on our route (even though I had already told him where they were) while driving at 56mph on the M1. The second driver did at least wait until the wheels stopped turning (briefly, in traffic on the Motorway) before getting onto Arsebook to tell his mates about this wonderful new job he had managed to obtain.
It’s bad enough doing this sort of thing when you’re on your own and (in theory at least) no-one is watching. But to do it brazenly when undergoing “training”■■
Roymondo:
The second driver did at least wait until the wheels stopped turning (briefly, in traffic on the Motorway) before getting onto Arsebook to tell his mates about this wonderful new job he had managed to obtain.
I wonder if…
He’ll be so quick to put on Fakebook, his foul ups and any other dogs dinners he makes of things because he wasn’t listening?
Driver-Once-More:
The driver, acording to reports, was selecting music on his phone, not answering or recieving a call.
Which is no different to putting a tape or cd in the radio and that is something that wouldn’t be considered a heinous crime, unwrapping a creme egg would take just as long as it took this guy to mess around with his phone and that also wouldn’t be regarded as a criminal act. Yet because it’s a phone in his hand it is.
It was a tragic accident and nothing more, I don’t see why it should be considered a crime.
newmercman:
It was a tragic accident and nothing more, I don’t see why it should be considered a crime.
correct. just think of ALL the OTHER accidents/ deaths which occur without distractions bit like the biggest SIN of all drink driving! Think of all the other DEATHS where drink/ drugs HAVE NOT been a factor. feel for the family of four who are dead BUT scaremongering of the highest disorder.
Driver-Once-More:
The driver, acording to reports, was selecting music on his phone, not answering or recieving a call.
Which is no different to putting a tape or cd in the radio
Yes it is. There’s a vast difference from slipping in a cd to scrolling through the phone, reading all the tracks etc to select the music.
Taking the CD case and reading the back of it for 10 - 15 seconds at a time would be considered a crime and what this guy did was the modern technological equivilant of that so I think you’re analogy is way off in terms of comparison
newmercman:
it was a tragic accident and nothing more
An accident is deemed as something that is unavoidable. Since this incident could have been avoided totally if he had been keeping his eyes on the road instead of his phone then its a whole lot more than “an accident”
Ok for argument’s sake, do you think that the driver crashed intentionally? Of course he never, so by definition he did it accidentally, therefore it was an accident, yes it could have been prevented or avoided and that’s the tragedy.
Now I’m not suggesting we should all go around playing with electronic gadgets while we drive, but I don’t believe that glancing at a screen on one for a few seconds is any more dangerous than looking at a gauge or in the mirrors for a similar period of time.
Speaking of time, if I was to look at my watch as I drive, it would be fine, yet if I were to check the time on my phone, it would be a crime.
Driver-Once-More:
The driver, acording to reports, was selecting music on his phone, not answering or recieving a call.
Which is no different to putting a tape or cd in the radio and that is something that wouldn’t be considered a heinous crime, unwrapping a creme egg would take just as long as it took this guy to mess around with his phone and that also wouldn’t be regarded as a criminal act. Yet because it’s a phone in his hand it is.
It was a tragic accident and nothing more, I don’t see why it should be considered a crime.
Blimey look at the video.Firstly just about the only remotely comparable diversionary part of driving the thing would be checking the mirrors continuously.In which case we know that we’ll need sufficient seperation distance to stop in time if traffic stops ahead between looking ahead to in all the mirrors and back again.On that note there is no defence regards piling into stationary traffic ahead without having enough room and time to stop.Regardless of whether the excuse is messing about with the radio or other controls let alone unwrapping a creme egg or scrolling through the menu of a mobile phone screen.As for using cassette tapes etc or tuning a radio or changing heater settings or dialling a hands free cab phone etc it’s essential that anyone learns to do all that without needing to look at the things while doing it.In just he same way that no one looks down at their feet when using the pedals.
newmercman:
Speaking of time, if I was to look at my watch as I drive, it would be fine, yet if I were to check the time on my phone, it would be a crime.
If you looked at your watch or dash guages for that matter you’d better make sure that you’ve got enough seperation distance to traffic ahead to allow time to stop, in the event of that traffic ahead making an emergency stop,between taking your eyes from the road to looking ahead again.IE running into stationary traffic ahead wiping out a family in the process is an absolute offence with some serious consequences regards sentencing.
So are you telling me that everyone drives with both hands on the wheel, constantly aware of everything happening in front of them? Because I’m calling BS on that.
Reaching into a bag for a sandwich or pork pie, peeling a banana, unwrapping a packet of ■■■■, rolling a ■■■, having a cup of tea from a flask, reaching for and opening a bottle of pop, looking at a map or your notes, scratching your balls, pulling your socks up and a million other things are things that drivers have done since the invention of the wheel.
I’m sure there’s been a few crashes over the years where the driver was preoccupied with one of those too, but there wasn’t the outcry like there is in this case.
Now I know people tragically died in this particular case, but I don’t agree that we should be calling for the bloke to be hung, drawn and quartered. Yes he was holding a phone, but it could’ve been a banana or a Mr Kiplings Bramley Apple pie and wouldn’t have evoked such a response.
just think of ALL the OTHER accidents/ deaths which occur without distractions 
bit like the biggest SIN of all drink driving! Think of all the other DEATHS where drink/ drugs HAVE NOT been a factor. 
feel for the family of four who are dead BUT scaremongering of the highest disorder.