Surely each case should be dealt with on it’s own merits. If you are driving safely you can knit a blanket for all I care. However, plenty of drivers are a danger even whilst doing nothing else but driving.

i know your taking it to an extreme, but, you are driving, therefore the only thing you should be doing is driving. There are too many outside events about to be trying to do more than one thing. If you are knitting you aren’t paying attention to the road, to the kids between the parked cars, the driver emergency stopping in front etc etc.

I was knitting whilst driving the other day, copper came alongside and shouted
“PULLOVER”
No I replied
“CARDIGAN”

IGMC 😳

Some people are so cock sure of themselves

Not cock sure of myself just aware of what I am doing. If the traffic gets crowded I stop talking to observe what is going on around me. If the conditions dictate then I’ll end the conversation just like I would if I had a passenger in the car.

Passed through Gunnison in Colorado a couple of years ago and they have an enlightened local statute that if you are caught by the police/sherriff with a mobile phone/electronic device in your hands when you are driving within the county boundries, the phone is taken off you and is destroyed there and then at the side of the road i.e. sim & memory card removed and cut up, battery taken out and then the phone is stamped on, the remains are sent for recycling.

The police HAVE to have photo/video evidence, but once they have this say ta ta to your toy. The second offence they impound your car for a month, the third… well lets just say nobody has been that dumb.

Local government had an understandable sense of humour failure after a three year old was reversed over by a driver on a phone.. the fact that it was the local mayor’s granddaughter may have had something to do with it. Lovely place by the way… well worth a visit….

Apparently issue of driving whilst on the phone has just went away…..

craigxxl – Member

Some people are so cock sure of themselves

Not cock sure of myself just aware of what I am doing. If the traffic gets crowded I stop talking to observe what is going on around me. If the conditions dictate then I’ll end the conversation just like I would if I had a passenger in the car.

Nope I was right the first time.

Passed through Gunnison in Colorado a couple of years ago and they have an enlightened local statute that if you are caught by the police/sherriff with a mobile phone/electronic device in your hands when you are driving within the county boundries, the phone is taken off you and is destroyed there and then at the side of the road i.e. sim & memory card removed and cut up, battery taken out and then the phone is stamped on, the remains are sent for recycling.

The police HAVE to have photo/video evidence, but once they have this say ta ta to your toy. The second offence they impound your car for a month, the third… well lets just say nobody has been that dumb.

Best. Idea. Ever.

Going back to the Sat Nav positioning, it amazes me how some people don’t remove pay and display stickers and flyers left under the wipers.

They can be blocking or at least distracting vision.

too many drivers don’t give a f***

Well, I did have a little (I mean little) look around and found a couple of interesting thoughts…..

Wiki link to distracted driver – of course you should never use a wiki link in a discussion but there are some interesting links from it to papers and findings on the difference between phone calls and talking to passengers. It talks about the research being mixed. I’ve googled a few of the articles and studies mentioned and I’m going to assume that phone calls are defiantly more distracting but not by a huge, huge margin.

Then head over to the Canadian Automobile Association site – quite good with lots of stats and references made to the papers they came from.

There is this –

top distractions identified by the CAA/AAA

Outside object/person/event — 29.9%
Adjusting radio/CD — 11.4%
Other vehicle occupants — 10.9%
Something moving in the car — 4.3%
Using another object/device — 2.9%
Adjusting car’s climate controls — 2.8%
Eating/drinking — 1.7%
Cellular phones — 1.5%

but also this

Cell phones are one of the most common distractions for drivers. Drivers engaged in text messaging on a cellular phone are 23 times more likely to be involved in a crash or near crash event compared with non-distracted drivers. (Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, 2010)

which doesn’t exactly help my case

but more interesting was :-

Children are four times more distracting than adults as passengers, and infants are eight times more distracting than adults as passengers

Lies, damn lies and statistics I know but if you are a little selective about what you look at and squint a bit you can combine the wiki links controversy about the difference between talking to passengers and on the phone with the CAA’s stance that infants are 8 times more distracting than adult passengers and I think there is a fair case that infants run handsfree phone conversations more than a little close in the risk to safe driving stakes.

As said earlier I’m not seriously advocating banning drivers taking sole care of infants but we ignore it as a risk because it’s an inconvenient truth.

Quite frankly I think there are far more distracting things on the road and in a car and what we need to address is people’s inability to follow rules, drive with care and attention or take driving seriously (rather than just driving on automatic). There is no logical difference between someone on a handsfree phone or someone in the back seat, unless of course you’re a complete moron and for some reason change the way you deal with conversations when having one on the handsfree.

We need to stop focusing on what we can ban and start focusing on how we can educate people to drive better.

I would say a child can be orders of magnitude more distracting than a phone call – you can hang up a phone call or tell the person at the other end to give you a minute but screaming babies or tantrumming toddlers won’t stop; a child being sick will keep on being sick and are too young to understand the logic of “Mummy/Daddy is busy at the minute – can you just be quiet please or we might have a crash”.

This. A new bypass around the east of Chippenham had the speed limit reduced from 60 to 50, and roundabouts introduced at three junctions, after two accidents, one fatal. Neither had anything to do with speed, or the junctions, but pure inattention by drivers. The fatal one involved a mother, distracted by her kids in the back, turning round to tell them off, and drifting across the road into the path of an oncoming truck. Neither was doing more than 30mph, but she was killed.
The other involved a driver pulling out into the path of a car overtaking a car that flashed her to say she could pull out.
Both clear examples of driver inattention resulting in severe consequences.
If I have a passenger, I hardly ever chat to them, as I find it distracting, and any conversation tends to die out after a while anyway. The stereo isn’t too distracting, because once it’s set on radio, it stays on one channel, or gets switched to pod or USB stick, and the volume control is a large knob I can feel and turn without taking my eyes off the road.
The biggest problem is the heater and climate controls in my Skoda, because they’re flush square buttons in a row, with nothing to distinguish any of them, and they’re set down below the radio, which makes them very difficult to use safely, and are a major distraction.
My old Puma had much better controls, large rotary switches above the radio that you could feel easily, and turn with the minimum of distraction.
Why can’t all cars have their controls laid out like that, so much safer to use on the move.

To those opposed to banning handsfree phones:

Since they’ve been shown to be no different in terms of distraction than non-handsfree phones, are you thus in favour of legalising all phone use whilst driving?

If not, and if we momentarily set aside the practicalities of enforcement, then for what reason?