What can we do about drivers on phones….

OK – this COULD be in the “what annoys you thread”, but I feel this is actually less of an annoyance, and WAAAY more of a dangerous crime..

Honestly, It’s really getting me down now..
I commute from Hove to Worthing (about 14 miles) by bike or car, on a mix of urban roads, and the A27. Speeds ranging from 20mph, to motorway speeds.

I’m not kidding if i said I see at least 15 people either driving with a phone in hand on the steering wheel, or doing the CLASSIC “right shoulder dropped, eyes flicking from the road to the right knee and back” (i.e holding a phone in the R hand, below the dash, and playing on it).

They’ll be doing this in either crawling traffic, or at 70mph.

If it’s crawling traffic and I’m on my bike, I’ve sometimes taken to knocking on the window etc.. it always starts with “i’m doing nothing wrong” to them quickly hiding their phone as soon as i get mine out to film them etc!

But it’s jsut soooo dangerous..why don’t they get it.. what more can be done?

I’m tempted to get some stickers made to slap on windscreens… i know I’m being childinsh like that, but i can’t think of what more the police etc can do.
No one cares.

DrP

Dealing with phone users is honestly the simplest, easiest, biggest, cheapest change you could make to ensure safer roads. On the motorway you can guarantee that the driver who is lazily bouncing around in their lane is on the phone. HGV drivers drifting on and off the hard shoulder. Middle-lane hoggers at 55mph.

I don’t see that many people actually making a call with it clamped to their heads (apart from white van drivers), but the nodding head as they look at it down in their laps is almost routine.

Clearly points aren’t working. How about we step up to an automatic six-month ban and a confiscation of the phone at the side of the road?

You could be the CyclingMikey of Sussex.

Standard fine in Norway now converts to about 800 GBP and an arse kicking from the police.  That concentrates minds

You could always do what this guy does…..

https://www.youtube.com/@CyclingMikey

Edit.  Beaten to it

I equally get wound up by parents on a long tail with two children riding with one hand while taking on the phone with the other.   I might wave at a driver if I see them but I try not to get too wound up by it as it just ruins my day.  It’s not really the cape I want to wear

Standard fine in Norway now converts to about 800 GBP

Getting the police to increase the fine would be a great idea.  Even if it never happens the publicity is always good

I have no idea how cyclingmikey does it.  I could never handle that much antagonism day to day (it’s fine occasionally though)

And mandated therapy, at their expense.

If you can’t put your phone down you have a problem.

parents on a long tail with two children riding with one hand while taking on the phone with the other.

I know not what means this.

People are obsessed with their phones! I know it’s not as dangerous, but cinema, gigs, anywhere! stupid people just can’t put them away. A change ain’t gonna come til the apocolypse!

standards just seem to be getting worse.  lack of police enforcement must be up there with the reasons why

Is  not not possible to prevent phones from working in cars?

There is no imperative to be connected 24 7.

The other thing that needs to change is infotainment systems in cars.

Mine asks if I want to read texts while I am driving why?

Cars need less distractions and less distracting  tech crap.

Clearly points aren’t working.

I’m not sure that it’s just  a case of the sanctions not working, I think it’s down to the fact that the law is properly enforced & people know that they can do it with impunity. I see if frequently when out cycling and walking.

Tougher sanctions would certainly help, but it needs to be enforced.

Clearly points aren’t working. How about we step up to an automatic six-month ban…

You could reintroduce capital punishment and it wouldn’t work. The apprehension of getting caught is the biggest barrier to offending followed by a swift process (FPN with PP).

We’ve got the swift process and just need to catch a few more now

…and a confiscation of the phone at the side of the road?

Deemed disproportionate. We weren’t allowed to seize them as evidence that a denier had been using one

“Standard fine in Norway now converts to about 800 GBP and an arse kicking from the police”

You can increase the punishments as much as you want but with seemingly no-one about to enforce the law what’s the point?  That’s why people do it.  They know the likelihood of being caught is hovering around zero.  What amazes me is the people in expensive modern cars that you know have bluetooth but the driver has their phone in their hand.  I had a new Range Rover pass me when I was cycling last week and the driver was holding their phone horizontally in front of their face using it on speaker.  I can’t believe a car like that doesn’t have a function to remove the need to be such a dick.

On the motorway you can guarantee that the driver who is lazily bouncing around in their lane is on the phone. HGV drivers drifting on and off the hard shoulder. Middle-lane hoggers at 55mph.

Oh 100%… I’ll say to my kids “look.. bet they are on their phone” as we approach cars doing this… and BOOM I’m always right..

Cycling Mikey is a wee hero of mine, BUT i’ve not the time to hang about doing what he does…

I’ve honestly thought about getting an insta360 on a ‘stalk’, and just filming my commute (bike OR car) from “above” and then just submitting clips day after day!

DrP

The other thing that needs to change is infotainment systems in cars.

They’re better than folks constantly looking at their phones though.  It surely can’t be that difficult technologically to enable in new cars a mandatory “Turn off your phone to start your car” function, or a “Place your phone in this box to start your car” that above a certain speed just locks itself. Other than a concerted traffic cop campaign, and some targeted harsh penalties, I can’t see the public changing their habits anytime soon, phones are clearly more addictive than the worrying about the fact that you might be distracted enough to kill some-one.

What can we do about drivers on phones…. 
shoot them.

A little while ago some knob drove straight over a zebra crossing I was walking across, clearly staring down at his phone in his lap.

I think this could be a fantastic use of AI operated cameras/camera vans…

The ability for AI to trawl through hours of 360 video images to find “driver with phone in hand” should be easy enough.

Litearally, jsut the act of being in a car, on the road, with a phone in hand should equal immediate 3 points and a £500 fine.
That would soon stop people.

DrP

I think this could be a fantastic use of AI operated cameras/camera vans…

Bindun, 2022 in Devon and Cornwall https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/ai-backed-traffic-cameras-can-catch-driver-using-a-mobile-phone-even-at-186mph

Is not not possible to prevent phones from working in cars?

There is no imperative to be connected 24 7.

That would affect passengers more than the driver I reckon. Kids in the back seat watching a film, passenger talking to someone, even just using the phone as a sat nav.

Besides, it’s once again trying to use tech to solve a problem – the solution is not yet more software to determine if it’s in a car and turn it off, it’s proper enforcement and meaningful fines.

This is a huge issue around here. When we walk to school we walk along a long straight road with traffic lights on a fairly short timer, so traffic builds up a lot. Yesterday I counted 17 drivers along the road playing/using their phones. Drivers would be on their phone, move forward 5m and then go straight back to their phone (if they stopped using it at all) like some sort of addiction.

I have thought about contacting local police to see if they could do a plain clothes op as they would catch so many people. Seems to be a variety of drivers from young people new to driving (would lose their licence if caught) to bus drivers and a cement lorry driver the other week.

Yeah , see it all the time, really pees me off. Then there’s a new thing I’m noticing up my end, a new type of driver who thinks rural speed limit zones need not apply to them- 50 in a 30.. 60 in a 40 past a school sort of thing. Seemingly zero awareness of the changing limits, maybe they’re looking at the phone so much they miss them – or maybe they’re these sovereign individual types who won’t obey the rules. Certainly no-one around to stop them. There’s been an epidemic of stupidity since the er’ epidemic.

I’d be happy for there to be technology in future cars that prevents exceeding the rural speed limits, and block phone usage too. The tech to do that is already there.

Sniper warning shot to the engine block,  and insurance won’t cover the repair

When you here teachers say that a new generation are now so addicted to their phones that they can’t concentrate long enough to get past reading a few pages of a book. It isn’t a great surprise what’s going to happen when they learn to drive and are tasked with having to concentrate long enough to get between a town or two.

I equally get wound up by parents on a long tail with two children riding with one hand while taking on the phone with the other.

They’re doing 20kph. What harm are they going to do to you even if they did hit you? It’s the head-down drivers who are the menace.

“Literally, jsut the act of being in a car, on the road, with a phone in hand should equal immediate 3 points and a £500 fine.

That would soon stop people.”

It’s already £200 fine and 6 points which doesn’t seem to deter many drivers.

The police could easily book a stack of drivers by putting a plain clothes officer on an appropriate junction, but it is obviously not something that is being prioritised among all their other responsibilities. A few years ago I submitted a complaint to the police about a lorry driver leaving the ferry with an open laptop mounted on his dash (he had a wee frame fitted to hold it in place). They never even replied to me. I know there are some prosecutions, but it feels like it is one of those things that has been tacitly accepted because “it doesn’t really matter, and everyone does it”. A bit like the bad old days where it was OK to drive home drunk from the pub as long as you were careful…

It surely can’t be that difficult technologically to enable in new cars a mandatory “Turn off your phone to start your car” function

If it was that easy, a government somewhere (a Scandi one probably) would have legislated for it by now.  Even if it was technologically possible, how would it affect passengers? Emergency calls? Vehicle connectivity for crash detection and reporting etc.

or a “Place your phone in this box to start your car” that above a certain speed just locks itself.

The idiots would just have a cheap second phone to put in the box.

I think the nearest we might have to a solution is mentioned above. AI monitoring of pooled camera footage to ID offenders then hit them hard with a ban and massive fine. Vehicle confiscation and prison time for a second offence.

When you here teachers say that a new generation are now so addicted to their phones that they can’t concentrate long enough to get past reading a few pages of a book. It isn’t a great surprise what’s going to happen when they learn to drive and are tasked with having to concentrate long enough to get between a town or two

But it’s not just young drivers, it’s everybody!

I’m not sure that it’s just  a case of the sanctions not working, I think it’s down to the fact that the law is properly enforced & people know that they can do it with impunity. I see if frequently when out cycling and walking.

Tougher sanctions would certainly help, but it needs to be enforced.

Bingo. Same here in Ireland – drivers do it with impunity because they know they won’t get caught because the police a) aren’t present at all and b) aren’t enforcing any of the basic rules of the road, such as red lights, mobile phones in cars, speeding etc.

Get the police to do their damn jobs – 3 points by default and a decent fine for anyone caught doing it, and a visible presence on the roads of police actually paying attention to this, would stop people pretty sharply.

Notice how drink driving, while perhaps climbing a little in recent years, is nothing like as prevalent as in North America – because there’s been a years-long campaign of checking, enforcement and proper punishments.

But it’s not just young drivers, it’s everybody!

100% I see people of all ages, up to properly old people doing this.  Lazy stereotyping to see this as a young person problem imo.

Is not not possible to prevent phones from working in cars?

Not really. Even if you tried a blanket approach of disabling the phone (which then has problems for passengers and also legitimate driver use eg streaming music/updating traffic info) it would be hard to do effectively.

Firstly you would need apple/google support which would be unlikely and then there is the question how to measure someone is driving. The best way would be to use gps but then you break navigation for me whilst all the **** would just switch off gps and keep talking.  Other location options (tracking speed etc) are far less accurate and so would likely knock out phones for people on trains etc.

One thing I really hate are the bleeping touchscreens to control all the car functions now.

It’s a shit situation but let’s face it, it is unlikely that anything will be done.

There is no money to fund the police to actually police it.

There is a large swathe of drivers who think that phone driving is acceptable and cannot comprehend that there is anything wrong with it.

Which leads to: any political party who made moves to actually implement existing laws, yet alone increase them,  would be fearful of committing political suicide. Anything punitive to drivers seems to be a vote loser even if it is plainly A GOOD THING.

See also – speed controllers, black boxes etc etc.

Anything punitive to drivers seems to be a vote loser

I’m pretty sure that the opposite is true. These interventions are popular, it’s just that there’s a very vocal minority who resist them.

Drink driving is socially unacceptable, that’s why it’s less common.
We need phone use to be socially unacceptable, at the moment, it isn’t.

See them all the time on my bike commute and only a tiny bit at start and end is on the roads, caught the tram home from central Manchester one day this week and the in the elevated position I lost count of the number of drivers with phone in hands, easy pickings for a police officer on the tram with a camera like they sometimes do with lorries on the motorways. A few weeks ago I’d stopped on bike to cross a slip road to join M60 and thought someone had died/passed out as could see the top of his head as he was looking down so much but its ok as he glanced up as he joined the slip road….

Standard fine in Norway now converts to about 800 GBP and an arse kicking from the police.  That concentrates minds

It’s around 500 gbp here in Queensland and it includes cyclists bit makes bugger all difference. Drives me nuts.

“Place your phone in this box to start your car”

That’s actually kinda what I’ve done to myself, I had an Android Auto touch screen thingie in my van for Sat Nav, Tunes etc but asked them to route the cable so that in order for it to be connected the phone has to be shut away in the glove compartment out of sight and not within easy reach.

Even I found it too damn tempting to check it when it pinged otherwise.

Agree on the Cycling Mikey comments, much like 20 mph zones and anti-flytipping campaigns, they’re pointless without enforcement and funding for said enforcement, get a camera and dob them in, in an ideal world with well funded police we wouldn’t have to do this but…

See it all the time also.  It’s not hard to spot who is using a phone, as said the glancing down, varying speeds and general shit driving (above the already shit standard of driving).

I remember a few years ago when I was out on my motorbike waiting at traffic lights when a young girls pulls up alongside me on her phone, tapping away.

I knocked on here window and said “it’s people like you who knock people like me off their bikes – please put your phone away”.  Sheepishly she did, but I suspect the phone was back out within minutes of the lights changing.

Let’s face it, most folk just don’t give a toss.

And walking around a town/city centre, it’s like a bloody zombie apocalypse with so many phone folk head down glued to their phones, shuffling and stumbling along.

Place your phone in this box to start your car

Would we people who use Waze or Google maps have to go back to our TomToms? Not sure the battery is any good in mine. 🙁

Yeah it’s an enormous and scary problem.

I don’t really see what can be done effectively to stop it.

I often wonder when I see the 20th driver with their eyes towards their laps, whether it would actually be safer to allow the use of phones as long as they were in a dash mounted cradle.

I mean, at least their eyes would be in the right ballpark..

Terrible.