the maoster:
As it happens as part of my military cp training I underwent training for and passed a police class 1 driving examination. Don’t recall being trained to use the radio then tbh. Perhaps you did on your course though?
Its not specific training for that but training to be able to prioritise safety in everything that’s done
Many non advanced trained drivers can keep the right priority even if the phone call is intense etc but how is the law able to determine who they are ?
It isn’t illegal to use a 2 way radio whilst driving. You can use a CB, an amateur radio, a taxi radio whilst driving and it isn’t illegal. So what is the difference between those and a mobile phone? I’ll tell you what the difference is, the number of people using them and the ability to easily prove they were being used.
The link between talking on mobile phones and accidents has been disproven just as the link between “speeding” and accidents has been. The study that is referred to in “death mobile phone” stories is one from the 1990s when mobile phones were still quite rare and their use not as “second nature” as it is now. A 3 year study covering a country with a population 6 times that of ours with worse standards of driving doing real world statistical analysis in a scenario which should definitely produce an increase can find no proof that making voice calls results in more accidents.
The guy should have got longer. Lack of sleep and watching ■■■■ while driving knob end
Advanced drivers? I carry my IAM card alongside all my other driver qualification cards - simples
As to the mobile phone thing
Why the hell do people, especially professional drivers, not use bluetooth headsets?
Talking on the phone a distraction? Think recent research has completely disproved this. No different to talking to a passenger, listening/singing along to the radio or doing exercises to relieve discomfort.
Conor:
It isn’t illegal to use a 2 way radio whilst driving. You can use a CB, an amateur radio, a taxi radio whilst driving and it isn’t illegal.
quite correct and the offence you’ll be prosecuted under will be driving with out due care.
it is how ever legal to use a mobile phone held in the hand for making an emergency call when on the move where by the caller stopping will cause danger or obstruction.
Really feel for the familys. This IDIOT got exactly what he deserves! There is no place in this day & age for such flouting of the rules & regs!
ROG:
matamoros:
ROG:
rambo19:
And yet people think it’s OK to use the phone whilst driving…That means hands free as well as hand held as I see no difference in the two - ok, hand held means driving one handed but many drivers do that already without serious safety issues
I can never understand why the law allows hands free but not hand held when both cause the same distraction
So does that mean talking to a passenger should be illegal as well, this is equally distracting and I have lost count of the number of times I have seen drivers completely unaware of what is going on around them due to being engrossed in conversation with a passenger.
Completely agree with the ban on hand held though.
The passenger argument never works because a passenger in a vehicle can get a sense of what is happening around them - someone on the other end of a phone cannot
The only passengers which can cause issues are those not old enough to have an idea of their surroundings
I would beg to differ judging from the number of car drivers, usually women but not always,that I have been behind who are completely engrossed in conversation with a passenger to the point of wandering over the road etc. Lots of passengers, not just children, are not drivers and have no road sense whatsoever.
The present smack on the back of the hand for phone use obviously does nothing to stop it. Its time that the licence was taken off offenders for a year because it is that sort of punishment that will make them take notice. Eddie.
erfguy:
The present smack on the back of the hand for phone use obviously does nothing to stop it. Its time that the licence was taken off offenders for a year because it is that sort of punishment that will make them take notice. Eddie.
But using a mobile phone for voice calls doesn’t increase accidents. The present smack on the back of the hand is what it is because the govt want to keep the cash cow going whilst pandering to people like you so they can be seen to be “doing something about it” even though they know themselves its not the problem its made out to be.
Its like the whole “speed kills campaign” bollox. When asked for actual data it turned out that in 95% of accidents, speed wasn’t the main contributory factor. As a professional driver with many miles under your belt I’m sure that you’ll agree there’s plenty of times where its safe to go faster than the number on the stick and plenty of times where doing the number on the stick will see you in the ditch. Hell the fact they’re upping the speed limit for trucks to what many have been doing for some years now proves just how much of a joke the whole “speed kills” campaign is.
Conor:
Gembo:
I don’t have a problem with it, especially as its recently been proved that attention and general awareness whilst driving is similar to that of a drink driver IF you are on a hands free!!Yet an extensive and truly independent in depth study by the London School of Economics in conjunction with Carnegie Mellor university in the USA proved making calls on mobile phones whilst driving does not increase accidents.
Maybe not but you’d be a fool to say that it doesn’t greatly increase the risk of you having one!
If it greatly increased the risk, as you say, then their would be an increase in accidents! And, apparently, there hasn’t been, so you talk nonsense. 
Added to which - the phone didn’t cause this accident anyway, did it? It was caused by a knobhead driver who flouted the hours - and should indeed have got a far longer prison sentence…
The Sarge:
Added to which - the phone didn’t cause this accident anyway, did it? It was caused by a knobhead driver who flouted the hours - and should indeed have got a far longer prison sentence…
I know, im not ■■■■■■■ blind but Well done for making that very clever observation, give yaself a pat on the back! 
The Sarge:
If it greatly increased the risk, as you say, then their would be an increase in accidents! And, apparently, there hasn’t been, so you talk nonsense.
whatever, cant be arsed to argue.
So, just as a re-cap, I talk nonsense because according to you using a phone whilst driving is apparently OK and doesn’t increase the risk of accident. Great piece of logic that!
Just hope you still feel the same when and and if a member of your family is wiped out by some prick that was on the phone at time of the accident.
Jesus f’in wept, there’s some folk that talk complete and utter ■■■■ on here.
Spose ya gota make allowances being welsh & that eh.
Well I for one think that using a phone whilst driving is distracting.
We all see it everyday-the driver wandering all over the place/the driver trying to change gear/go round a roundabout with phone glued to his ear.
For me the biggest problem is smart phones- people constantly looking down and checking their phone.
Gembo:
Maybe not but you’d be a fool to say that it doesn’t greatly increase the risk of you having one!
We have more cars than ever doing more mileage than ever, the number of mobile phones and usage has never been higher yet accident figures from 1990 have been consistently falling.
Compared with 1990, in 2012 there were 1/3 the number of people killed, less than 1/3 the number of people injured and the slight casualty rate was over 1/3 lower. This despite a rise in “crash for cash” claims.
In fact if you look at the first graph on page 2 of this document which is all road user casualties per year since the 50’s, there is no spike for mobile phones nor an increase in the rate of reduction from the time the law was changed to make mobile phone use illegal. So even UK govt statistics don’t support the claim that mobile phone use results in more accidents.
parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn02198.pdf
But lets look at some more hyperbole from the media and the safety campaigners from the last couple of years where they’ve been constantly telling us using a mobile phone is more dangerous than drink driving.
The number of accidents directly attributable to mobile phone use where the Police have been able to confirm a mobile phone was in use at the time or immediately before the accident was 378 in 2012. The media headlines in 2012 said “that’s more than the combined drink driving deaths from 2009 to 2012” which stood at 213, completely ignoring the fact that
a) there were only 17 deaths in those 378 accidents in 2012 and,
b) far more people use mobile phones when driving than drink drive.
There is no data to prove the claim that using mobile phones whilst driving is more dangerous than drink driving. In fact there’s very little data to back up any of the claims made about them increasing the number of accidents.
i think 99.9% of calls carried out whilst driving are not a problem and unless driving in an environment where you need to constantly make gear changes, then that doesn’t matter if it’s handheld or hands free.
Gembo:
The Sarge:
Added to which - the phone didn’t cause this accident anyway, did it? It was caused by a knobhead driver who flouted the hours - and should indeed have got a far longer prison sentence…I know, im not [zb] blind but Well done for making that very clever observation, give yaself a pat on the back!
The Sarge:
If it greatly increased the risk, as you say, then their would be an increase in accidents! And, apparently, there hasn’t been, so you talk nonsense.whatever, cant be arsed to argue.
So, just as a re-cap, I talk nonsense because according to you using a phone whilst driving is apparently OK and doesn’t increase the risk of accident. Great piece of logic that!
Just hope you still feel the same when and and if a member of your family is wiped out by some prick that was on the phone at time of the accident.
Jesus f’in wept, there’s some folk that talk complete and utter [zb] on here.
Spose ya gota make allowances being welsh & that eh.
No, you talk nonsense because you stated that only a fool would argue that there is NO more risk when using a phone. There is zero evidence to back up you calling other people fools, and that is nonsense.
I have never said that it’s OK to use a handheld phone - it is illegal and shouldn’t be done.
And I well make an awful lot of allowances for the fact you are a apple-headed bumpkin. There, that makes us even
Conor:
Gembo:
Maybe not but you’d be a fool to say that it doesn’t greatly increase the risk of you having one!We have more cars than ever doing more mileage than ever, the number of mobile phones and usage has never been higher yet accident figures from 1990 have been consistently falling.
Compared with 1990, in 2012 there were 1/3 the number of people killed, less than 1/3 the number of people injured and the slight casualty rate was over 1/3 lower. This despite a rise in “crash for cash” claims.
In fact if you look at the first graph on page 2 of this document which is all road user casualties per year since the 50’s, there is no spike for mobile phones nor an increase in the rate of reduction from the time the law was changed to make mobile phone use illegal. So even UK govt statistics don’t support the claim that mobile phone use results in more accidents.
parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn02198.pdf
But lets look at some more hyperbole from the media and the safety campaigners.
The number of accidents directly attributable to mobile phone use where the Police have been able to confirm a mobile phone was in use at the time or immediately before the accident was 378 in 2012. The media headlines in 2012 said “that’s more than the combined drink driving deaths from 2009 to 2012” which stood at 213, completely ignoring the fact that
a) there were only 17 deaths in those 378 accidents in 2012 and,
b) far more people use mobile phones when driving than drink drive.
This says otherwise-
mirror.co.uk/news/world-news … sh-2978633
and this-
bgr.com/2011/07/08/study-finds-c … rash-risk/
and this-
nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1204142
and this-
dailymail.co.uk/motoring/art … times.html
Need I go on?
I’m sure you will…
The Sarge:
No, you talk nonsense because you stated that only a fool would argue that there is NO more risk when using a phone. There is zero evidence to back up you calling other people fools, and that is nonsense.
Don’t miss quote me. Read the post again.
I said,
you’d be a fool to say that it doesn’t greatly increase the risk of you having one!
How the ■■■■ anyone can argue with that is bloody mind numbingly stupid.
Surely to Christ even you can see that!
Anyone who says that it isn’t a distraction whilst driving needs to stop bloody kidding themselves and believing they are some super human.
Ignorant, selfish pricks.
I knew you would…