What can we do about drivers on phones....

Wife’s nephew got a warning phone call off his insurers because his mate had been using his phone to choose some music in the car, and the black box saw that his phone was unlocked while driving - the tech does exist.

I don’t get why black boxes aren’t more widespread.

I don’t see the obvious evidence of phone addiction in my age group or older, atleast not the point where its a problem – this appears to be a product of a giant social experiment carried out on a younger cohort, its not going well.

I do. Parents ignoring kids and scrolling. Older folk on facebook all day consuming junk. Mobile addiction affects everyone, it's just that some of us who are older have had experience of habits and recognise it happening and know how to break them. SM on phones is an addictive thing like cigarettes imo. Kids with mobiles have little hope resisting it all. We had Donkey Kong hand-helds when we were kids, some of this is nothing new but the way SM works creates a really hook.

Drivers on phones .. dunno. Enforcement and penalties are all there can be. Same for the stink of skunk coming from cars, speeding, road rage etc - there's no enforcement so we are where we are. I hate almost everything about car culture tbh*, they're ~20% practical transport and the rest is all negative. I don't fight it, we're outnumbered by idiots.. just be defensive.

*If you have a nice old or classic car and that's your car culture, you're great.. I love all that stuff.

They’re doing 20kph. What harm are they going to do to you even if they did hit you?

Please, give your head a wobble!

It would be trivial to get the majority of the problem solved in latest gen cars with phone as key and NFC readers in the car.

Couple of lines of code to ensure that the car would stop running if you don't have your phone on the reader.
Or cut the infotainment, or have loads of chimes, bings and bongs.
Every time you come to a halt without the phone on the reader, the handbrake comes on and the powerpack shuts down.

Most journeys are solo journeys, so there won't be A.N.Other person in the car to do it for you, not many people will want to have a second phone with phone as key on it (in case they lose it), majority of phone use is at low speeds in traffic too.

Probably cut the problem by 80% overnight.

I don’t get why black boxes aren’t more widespread.

I think that or Mert's suggestion would need to be enforced by law first, no car brand will add something like this and make their product less appealing to a load of phone-addicted customers. Or it'd take a safety-rep brand like Volvo to go first and shame other brands into doing it?

100% agree, people staring down at their phone whilst driving boils my piss. TBH the general standard of driving is shocking.

Massive fines, even the death penalty wouldn't stop people as they know the chances of getting caught are so slim.

The only way to do it is fund more traffic police. But that costs money. If it wasn't so open to potential corruption/abuse I'd say, increase the fines and the coppers get 50% to fund themselves. They'd soon be quids in.

Some of the internal camera monitoring of the driver (that is being legislated for in some markets) will be able to detect a distracted driver and make it really annoying to continue driving once it's flagged that you're distracted.

I've been a guinea pig on the research for this, and its a) really annoying, b) not very good yet and c) incredibly racist.

I cycle through Surrey into London a couple of times a month and the amount of people using mobiles is literally off the charts. Not much winds me up these days, but it's such selfish behaviour that can have severe consequences to other road users. Totally unacceptable!

My punishment would be an instant 12 month ban, no excuses, no caveats. How that would be enforced i have no idea. I've sen some portable cameras on the A3 that apparently were to 'catch' offenders, but that was months ago and have no idea what their success rate was?

I also see the same selfish behaviour on the motorways too. I did come with a business idea which would feature an unmarked car with a modified interior to allow a 360deg camera to film drivers using their mobiles! I reckon on a 100 mile journey i capture a dozen offenders easily!

It’s not possible to ever have enough police to deal with the problem given how prevalent it is. I have no issue with using ‘technology’ to deal with the problems that technology causes. If it’s already a 6 pointer and fine, so we’ve already decided it breaks the law, we just need a way of enforcing it properly rather than being negligent.

I also see the same selfish behaviour on the motorways too. I did come with a business idea which would feature an unmarked car with a modified interior to allow a 360deg camera to film drivers using their mobiles! I reckon on a 100 mile journey i capture a dozen offenders easily!

Try doing it on a motorbike. Filter down any dual carriageway queue into any big city at any morning rush hour. A few runs and you would catch literally thousands of people.

needs some of this doesn't it - swap the booze for phones

'Modern' infotainment systems are nearly as bad. Particularly touchscreen only ones.

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.

Riding with 30+ kg of high up load on the back of a long bike makes things quite unstable compared to a normal bike. You need both hands on the bars unless you're doing something essential such as indicating. The risk is more to the kids on the back than 3rd parties, but even then I wouldn't be lining up to get hit by a cargo bike with 3 people on it - total mass of mine with 2 kids on was about 150kg.

I think it also doesn't help that cars are too easy to drive and too disconnected from the outside world. Practically, you don't actually have to concentrate very hard to drive a modern car at 70mph on the motorway and if you spend 2 hours a day stuck in traffic jams commuting you're going to be stationary and bored off your t!ts most of that time. (one reason I'd never take a job where I couldn't ride to work)

I'm lucky/stupid enough to own a mid-life-crisis soft top car. Its noisy, windy, uncomfortable, requires some physical strength, but its involving and it takes application and focus to actually make it do what I want. There's just no time for ****ing around with phones.

Compared to say, a modern SUV or electric car - aircon, good sound proofing, auto gears, auto lights (which don't turn on in the fog, it seems), comfy heated/massage seats, music, overassisted steering, overservoed brakes etc. Its like being sat in front of the telly with the sound turned down - how many drivers are actually, viscerally,  aware of the kinetic energy inherent in their 2T+ vehicle and the damage it could do?

My 2p'orth would be to make mandatory retesting a thing, every 5 years max, reduced time gaps for new drivers, the elderly and anyone with points etc. I have to do it for all my plant tickets, most of which doesn't go over walking pace. If nothing else, it makes you keep up to date with changing legislation.

Beyond just the phones issue - it needs to be harder to get a license, harder to keep it long term and it needs to be seen as a valued privilege to have one, not as a "right".

The worst culprits where I am are delivery drivers tapping away whilst riding around on mopeds - often end up riding alongside them as they half wheel me down a hill, I swear they barely look at the road.

Any sort of enforcement like a traffic warden for phone use would easily be self-sustaining, if not highly profitable.

I see it all day, every day from my truck cab.  So easy to see what people have in their laps or tucked away below the window line.  The worst development for me is the growing number of people who don't call anymore, they video call.  See it on the street where it's antisocial but when driving both people are aware of what is happening.

We just need a targeted campaign that's consistently running to make any progress on the issue though and with the chronic underfunding of the police it really is a low priority.  The only way to tackle it now I can think of is to authorise private companies to collect the evidence via roadside cameras etc but the idea of privatising the work of the Police doesn't sit easy with me.

Agree with the “all ages” sentiment… Though it’s certainly. in my eye, more evident from 17 up to about 50..

Probably peaking in men aged 30-45.

DrP

Most of the ones I have seen have been women in the 17-30 bracket. Also seen a lot of "mature" ladies doing it too. I'm higher up in the car/van so you see more of it looking down. Perhaps blokes are better at hiding it.

Lots of time you see it in the rear view mirror. Or you are sitting behind a car in traffic and see the tell tale whatsap gap (Cycling Mikey) . Long press of the horn for those !

My vehicle can read out and dictate texts , I mostly use voice control for sat nav etc. There really is no need to touch your phone in a modern car, even when you need to keep in contact whilst on the road.

Interesting note on demographics there.  I was about to post that it is probably married blokes working their side-dating apps.  The car is a good place to get the privacy they need to do this.

Try doing it on a motorbike. Filter down any dual carriageway queue into any big city at any morning rush hour. A few runs and you would catch literally thousands of people.

It's a lot easier to spot at this time of year as well - dark(er) mornings, there'll be a telltale glow from the driver's right knee as the balance the phone there and try and scroll / glance down. I used to see it loads when I was cycling down the outside of stationary traffic.

Over on the UK Government thread is a lot of talk about the "£22bn black hole" and other stuff around the country's finances, tax rises and austerity to fix it all... I swear you could fix a massive chunk of it with a big nationwide crackdown on driving standards. Speeding and phone use are the two easy wins, you can do the majority of those with cameras but you'd solve SO many issues with a concerted campaign of road safety with appropriately high fines.

It is the manufacturers of the phones that are to blame. They track, trace and know our every movement. They Gyroscopes in them can detect our directions and speed of movement- as can the GPS.

They should have an inbuilt 'I am not working as you a driving' safety mechanism.

Clearly tech firms rule the roost.

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?

People need to believe there's a probability of getting caught and points/fine applied for the deterrent to have any effect, right now they don't believe they'll get caught. Frankly I think that sits with the police, they need to be detecting and going after Drivers on their phones. I do think a driving bans should be explored, it's as dangerous as Drink driving according to some studies (right?), as for confiscating the phone, Nah... confiscate the car.

I do think a fresh campaign is needed, and it probably needs to draw parallels with drink driving, some of the best efforts we've had at making our roads safer have used good old fashioned stigmatisation, how many people do you know who would proudly drive about pissed and without a seatbelt on today? The only real dick moves that seem to be more accepted these days are speeding and phone use.

Get caught drink driving and you're a proper social pariah (unless you move in very scummy circles), I feel like it should really be the same for "phone driving"...

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.

The irony is that probably actually having a conversation is one of the least distracting ways to use a phone!  Not that i am condoning doing that - but every other use is worse.

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?

Well points already mean:

- for new drivers retaking your driving test (theory and practical)
- for everyone, if you get caught twice in 3 years you are banned for 6 months
- anyone who has a very heavy right foot or is shoddy with their insurance paperwork will get banned if caught on their phone

so I don't think the penalty is the problem - the problem is a lack of enforcement.  A cop could spend the whole day at my local traffic lights and never have time to deal with anything else.  Contrary to popular opinion though police don't get to keep the fines so there is little incentive for such easy pickings other than improving road safety.  Weirdly camera safety partnerships are usually set up in a way that they are only incentivised to catch speeders and not other routine offences.

They should have an inbuilt ‘I am not working as you a driving’ safety mechanism

But then you're also preventing anyone using a mobile device above a certain speed, what about passengers? I really don't think it is the mobile phone manufacturer's fault, anymore than drink driving is the fault of the makers of alcoholic beverages. It's a choice to knowingly break the law and use a mobile whilst driving, lets not make excuses for the idiots that do it. That AI camera system sounds a great idea to me, let's hope it's rolled out nationally.

I agree phone use by drivers does seem to be increasing! It's a problem that could be solved, by a combination of more enforcement from Police & use of AI cameras, and could be paid for from the fines. But no government wants to commit to a "war on motorists" as the tabloids would paint it, so it'll never happen.

Some cars already have driver monitoring cameras. Make these mandatory for all new cars, just like we did for seatbelts… link it to the drivers phone and block phone use for driver, car could detect passenger phone present and allow that usage.

For a lot of the drivers skills on display out there, DoucheMusks fully autonomous uber taxi things can’t come quickly enough.

I see it all day, every day from my truck cab

On the subject of truck drivers - whilst crossing the road I saw the driver of an articulated car transporter eating a pot noodle whilst stopped at the lights - I could see the steam off the pot noodle, so it was hot, and he had a proper spoon, so it suggests a regular thing. How's that going to go when he spills it in his lap at 56mph, with 30 odd ton behind him..?

If professional drivers, who are reliant on their driving license for their livelihood, can't be trusted to act appropriately, there's little chance of the majority of other drivers doing much better.

(that's not to tar all truckies with the same brush - but I do feel that anyone who makes a living from driving - taxis, delivery drivers, HGV & PSV, should 100%, without fail, be the ones who set the highest standards of driving for the rest of us to aspire too. All too often - especially taxis and multidrop van drivers fall SO far short of that)

What about, if you provide evidence of another person using a phone while driving, if they are convicted you get 50% of the fine

You'll basically turn the entire country into snitches, neighbours reporting neighbours, and a breakdown of social cohesion. But I imagine you'd see a steep drop off in illegal phone use

Like much crime it goes relatively unpunished because our sentencing guidelines are way too soft. IMHO any crime with a chosen intent should have at least two zeros added to the current fine, complete and final loss of the vehicle and a 5 year ban. Stuff any hardship plea. Mega fines would pay for a dedicated and ring fenced motoring police to take this burden off the normal police forces. Speeding, dodgy loads, over dark tints, failure to indicate. Everything on the road. Lets say £1000 or may be ten times that for every mph over the limit sort of thing.

Small fine/points is ok on a first offender, as long as nobody is harmed.

2nd conviction would bring a serious charge with a large fine and something like 8 points

3rd conviction even larger fine, 3 year ban, and even confiscation of the vehicle if they are the owner(or increase fine/ban if they aren't

4th conviction. 1 month prison sentence plus fine and 2 year ban.

2nd conviction cut their thumbs off with a bandsaw

1st conviction receive a fine and someone elses thumbs

Maybe a  STW collective 'campaign' of written contact to PCCs and Chief Constables etc? A bit like Cycling UK do where they have a template for you to use. It's a start. (thinking emoji)

whether it would actually be safer to allow the use of phones as long as they were in a dash mounted cradle.

We already do?

Make it 7 points so if you are caught twice in 5 years it’s an automatic 1 year ban

That's not how it works. 12 points is a minimum six month ban. You'd only get a year ban if a previous ban was taken into account.

No hardship please allowed.tough

Again, that's not how it works. Exceptional Hardship is only applied in, well, exceptional cases and would be offset by considerably higher fines. Hardship in and of itself is explicitly barred from affecting a court decision.  Successfully securing an Exceptional Hardship plea is really difficult despite what the gutter press would have us believe.

My punishment would be an instant 12 month ban, no excuses, no caveats.

Still not how it works.

Company I work for puts cameras in lorry cabs, just need to have them by default in cars - sell it as an insurance reducer!

the black box saw that his phone was unlocked while driving

Colour me sceptical.

Couple of lines of code to ensure that the car would stop running if you don’t have your phone on the reader.

"I don't have a phone."

no car brand will add something like this

I think it's a legal requirement now for new cars to have the ability to talk natively to a black box?

They should have an inbuilt ‘I am not working as you a driving’ safety mechanism.

How's that going to work for the passengers?

For a lot of the drivers skills on display out there, DoucheMusks fully autonomous uber taxi things can’t come quickly enough.

We don't have driverless trains and they're on rails. Driverless cars is up there with Father Christmas and the tooth fairy.

On the subject of truck drivers

I saw one a while back with a paperback book on the go.

What about, if you provide evidence of another person using a phone while driving... I imagine you’d see a steep drop off in illegal phone use

How? By filming them on your phone as you drive past?

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

Make the fine enough to cover the costs and problem solved.

Honestly I would be pleased if it was an active revenue raiser. UK drivers pay £1.2 billion a year* on parking fines to private companies. Given current rates of phone use, and the potential for harm, I would want total fines for phone use to be 3 or 4 times that at least.

The annual police budget is £17 billion*. So it pays for a big chunk of that bill.

*Numbers plucked from Google without fact-checking

IMHO any crime with a chosen intent should have at least two zeros added to the current fine, complete and final loss of the vehicle and a 5 year ban.

How's that going to work for someone who has no money? £5/fortnight until you're dead?

Sentencing isn't the issue. Enforcement is the issue.

Stuff any hardship plea.

Still not how it works.

2nd conviction would bring a serious charge with a large fine and something like 8 points

3rd conviction even larger fine, 3 year ban, and even confiscation of the vehicle if they are the owner(or increase fine/ban if they aren’t

4th conviction. 1 month prison sentence plus fine and 2 year ban.

Almost how it works already. We're getting there, woo!

Mobile phone use when driving is a pain.  It used to be the case that you could see someone ahead and think "they're pissed."  Nowadays, it's "they're either drunk or on the phone."  There is no need for it and no excuse, even if you're driving something from the 1970s you can still sucker a phone cradle to the windscreen to use as a satnav.  But knee-jerk reactions squealing about punitive measures two steps away from "hanging's too good for them" is not helpful.  What's needed isn't the punishment, it's the fear of being caught.  Our full-on robot chubbie for lucrative speed cameras has had a knock-on effect on actual police just being out and about.

Driving without a seatbelt today would be unthinkable.  Lighting a fag in the cinema would be unthinkable.  Having a gallon of lager and driving home would (largely) be unthinkable.  These aren't just legal pressures, they're social pressures.  We need to get to the same point with phones - someone who is driving picks up their phone, the passenger goes "put that down, you nob."

Make it 7 points so if you are caught twice in 5 years it’s an automatic 1 year ban .

6 points (as it currently is) already achieves this - although its 2x in 3yrs = 6 months ban because that's the totting up rules.

No hardship please allowed.tough .

Its not hardship its EXCEPTIONAL hardship which the law allows to be considered as part of totting up proceedings.  Contrary to the impression you will get in places like this, it is not at all easy to argue (if it was it wouldn't be exceptional).  The Crown could probably do with appealing some of the more questionable cases though to keep the standard high.

Make it a minimum of £700 fine , double for second offence in 5 years.

We don't have minimum fines in this country.  The maximum fine for using a mobile phone is £2500.  The fixed penalty is £200, if you are caught twice in 3 yrs you will need to go to court anyway and so will likely get a bigger fine (and in E&W +prosecution costs etc).

Allow a kick back of 10% of the fine to anyone leading to a successful conviction of phone use. They did it with drink driving back in the 90s.

Did they?  I'm not sure we want people arguing in court that "CycleCameraGuy" is only reporting them for the money or to encourage "SkintCameraGuy" to distort/exagerate evidence to lead to more convictions.

Ask insurance companies to double the insurance of people who refuse to fit a tamper proof camera that records the driver while the engine is running. Remove the ” no I wasn’t” to prove you weren’t by showing me the video. The tech is so cheap now. Insurance void if you point the camera elsewhere.

Insurance protects "innocent" third parties - voiding it seems like a bad idea.   Even if it was just the comprehensive bit of the policy - nobody believes they are going to have an accident so at that moment in time would not matter.

Small fine/points is ok on a first offender, as long as nobody is harmed.

So if you admit it and have a clean license (or 3 points max) you will likely be offered £200 + 6pts

2nd conviction would bring a serious charge with a large fine and something like 8 points

A second offence in 3yrs will go to court, you will tot up and be banned for 6 months.  The court will almost always fine you significantly more than £200.

3rd conviction even larger fine, 3 year ban, and even confiscation of the vehicle if they are the owner(or increase fine/ban if they aren’t

A 3rd conviction IS likely to result in a ban.  (If the first offence was dealt with by fixed penalty it will NOT be recorded as a conviction so if the points are off you license the court will not know about it unless you went to court - the "deal" with fixed penalties is if you pay quickly the state won't record a conviction and it is mostly forgotten after 4 yrs).

4th conviction. 1 month prison sentence plus fine and 2 year ban.

Sending people to prison for 1 month - almost regardless of what its for is generally regarded by everyone "in the system" as a really bad use of resources.   It won't have escaped your notice that prisons are bursting at the seems.  People who go to prison often become unemployable - so not only do you and I need to pay for them to be housed for a month but the state ends up subsidising them potentially for the rest of their lives.

One issue is that people "with points" on their license believe it is "normal" when in fact the majority of drivers have clean licenses.  Perhaps if there was a bit more social stigma around points it would make job applications, car rental etc a little bit more awkward.

The problem, as with most traffic offences, is not the penalty regime - its that the chances of detection are low and if you did it once last week and got away with it then twice this week seems ok, an four times next week and still no action so its just normal.  You need cops and they need to be motivated to catch people.  And stop sending people on driver improvement courses for stuff that required an intentional action.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5190126-nob-on-a-bike

A timely Mumsnet thread. To my very pleasant suprise, most commenters there (aside from the original poster) agree with us!

I note lots of people on this thread seem to have opinions/ideas on how various technologies could help address this problem, one primarily created by technology and human behaviours,

I'd respectfully suggest that while there might be a 'tech' angle to consider, the key bit is still the behaviour aspect. add all the black boxes and sensors you like (and with them more potential points of failure?) but fundamentally its the conduct of the autonomous meat sack in the driver's seat that needs adjustment.

Almost every time I venture outside the behaviour aspect on display seems to be a lost cause, you just have to remain vigilant in the douche heavy environment.

It took years and years of government advertising to change attitudes and behaviour towards drink drinking and seat bet use. A long term advertising campaign could help educate and 'shame' the public in to adopting new behaviours.

Car manufactures (Volvo) are starting to have internal facing cameras that detect it. It'll take time for this to come into fruition and across the board, but it'll happen. Nothing will work until then. And another decade of 'phone use at the wheel' - while not great - is so insignificant on a population-level timescale that it really doesn't matter. It matters to us because we're living through it, but in x number of years it won't be a thing any more (not least because cars will - very likely - be operating quite autonomously).

Change takes a while. We always want everything to happen immediately - the world just doesn't work like that. Legislation and planning is forward-looking. Eg all this green energy etc stuff and national infrastructure (HS2, ETC etc) we're doing now isn't for us, it's for future generations.

Wife’s nephew got a warning phone call off his insurers because his mate had been using his phone to choose some music in the car, and the black box saw that his phone was unlocked while driving – the tech does exist.

I don’t get why black boxes aren’t more widespread.

My daughter's mate has this.  She can't sat-nav on her phone while driving as the black box app won't allow it.

I can see teens getting 2 phones, an el-cheapo with the black-box app and their main phone for satnav/music/crossy-road

some new cars can detect if you arent paying attention to the road. thats a catch all for tiredness, phone use, playing with the stereo, tying to spank the kid behind you...

pretty much every car in the last 5+ years (so probably approaching half the cars driven regularly) has carplay/android auto. if people actually used the technology presented to them, maps, texts (read out for you) etc can be done hands free via your car. phone never needs to leave my pocket so no faffing with cradles that detect the phone and so on.

I'd love to see mandatory dashcams including a view of the driver. any accident, footage reviewed, and if you are on your phone, insurance refuses to pay out (3rd party remains, obviously). a few high profile tabloid sob stories about being out of pocket five figures might scare the rest of the population into complying.

Change takes a while. We always want everything to happen immediately – the world just doesn’t work like that. Legislation and planning is forward-looking. Eg all this green energy etc stuff and national infrastructure (HS2, ETC etc) we’re doing now isn’t for us, it’s for future generations.

Thing is, the laws on mobile use while driving were first passed in 2003, that's 21 years ago. So in the space of about one generation the square root of sweet FA has been achieved despite people having the foresight in the early 2000's to try and legislate against the very situation we find ourselves living with today. how many future generations should we expect to pass before this relatively simple issue is finally gripped?

Patience, for all it's virtues, can be a bit overrated at times.

Even if it was technologically possible, how would it affect passengers?

It wouldn’t be difficult to build solutions. We already have detection by cameras from outside a car so think how much easier it would if we had cameras in the car itself. Whole can of worms on privacy but it’s not a technology implementation issue.

How? By filming them on your phone as you drive past?

No obviously...

If you Think long and hard about it, I'm sure you could think of some examples where you don't need to be driving a car yourself to be able to film a driver on their phone....

the black box saw that his phone was unlocked while driving

Colour me sceptical

It's true this happens...

My OH has fannied around with car insurance for her daughter, so that SHE has the black box in her name (which is linked to my OHs phone)

Her daughter was driving the car, my OH was on HER phone, and the insurance company wrote saying if this happens again (phone use whilst driving) they'll cancel the policy..

DrP

Thing is, the laws on mobile use while driving were first passed in 2003, that’s 21 years ago. So in the space of about one generation the square root of sweet FA has been achieved despite people having the foresight in the early 2000’s to try and legislate against the very situation we find ourselves living with today. how many future generations should we expect to pass before this relatively simple issue is finally gripped?

With the incoming tech, the car will safely pull itself over and/or log the incident for insurance purposes. It is coming. Expect it to be prevalent in 10-15 years (which is acceptable/reasonable)

If so, I hope the next gen of electric cars can divert some electrons via a prong built into the seat to alert the driver more…