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No Texting While Driving sign, Houston, texasPolice to seize phones of all drivers in crashes in clampdown on illegal texting and phoning at the wheel
The mobile phones of all drivers involved in crashes will be seized and examined under new police guidelines aimed at discouraging drivers from texting and calling at the wheel.
It is already illegal to use a mobile phone at the wheel but the law is widely flouted.
Police will now check whether drivers were using their phone prior to the crash as a matter of course, and will be able to use the mobile records as evidence in court.
Gloucestershire Chief Constable Suzette Davenport, who is responsible for roads policing at the Association of Chief Police Officers, brought in the guidelines.
Previously they were used only in accidents where people were killed or seriously injured.
Earlier this month we reported how the government is considering doubling the number of penalty points motorists receive when they are caught using a handheld mobile phone at the wheel, following a recommendation from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Under the proposal put forward by Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, drivers committing the offence would receive six penalty points, meaning that anyone caught on two occasions in a three-year period would lose their licence, reports The Guardian.
Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin said he was taking the suggestion seriously since the "amounts of casualties there have been are absolutely appalling".
He continued: "The person using their phone doesn't realise the damage or the danger they can be in. It ends up ruining different people's lives – those who are driving as well as those who are injured.
"It is one that I want to look at. There could be some difficulties about it but I think we've got to get that message across to people about safety.
"We have been very lucky in this country in seeing, year on year, the number of road deaths and casualties actually falling. But one death is one too many and we need to look at those and see where we are going."
In 2012, more than 10,000 drivers caught using their phone at the wheel opted to take a road safety course instead of the points.
But Professor Stephen Glaister from the RAC Foundation told the Daily Mail: “More systematic checking of drivers’ phone records after a crash would... send out a message that police are taking this matter seriously and people who flout the law will be caught.”
AA president Edmund King also welcomed the move, saying: “The current deterrent just isn’t working.
“Many drivers seem addicted to their phones and just can’t resist looking at a text or tweet at the wheel. We need a concerted effort to crack this addiction with harsher penalties linked to an information and enforcement campaign.”
Hugh Bladon, of the Alliance of British Drivers, said: “I am 100 per cent against anyone texting while driving, and those caught deserve everything they get.
“But I’m worried police could overdo it, just because someone is involved in a minor shunt, surely it shouldn’t mean they should lose their phone.”
Ed Morrow, of road safety charity Brake, said: “We are fully supportive of the efforts by the police to clamp down on mobile phone use at the wheel
“Offenders need to know they will be caught, they will be prosecuted, and there will be serious consequences.”
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The madman Fox failed to fill in the form correctly...
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Not so long ago you could get Muc Off for £12 in one of the many sales - £30 is off the scale ridiculous greedflation in action.
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Maybe you should have started off by saying a group of people had tried to murder you. Then plod might have understood the seriousness of the...
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Haha, try floating that notion in The Torygraph!
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Where's Cycling Mikey when you need him??
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37 comments
So why have you not shopped him to the DVLA?
That is exactly the kind of reckless behavior that gets people on bikes hit and killed.
Police would be interested too, as a lot of "petty" driving illegality like driving with no tax/MOT often tends to lead to bigger things.
And yes I have shopped untaxed vehicles in our street & seen them towed away. It is anonymous
Do it on a monthly basis, but nothing happens. I think since the dvla closed the local offices they no longer care and are leaving it up to the police to catch non taxed vehicles.
Traffic from services like Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, or Apple's iMessage, would not show up in telco logs of calls or texts. It would show up in encrypted network traffic but telcos do not log all such traffic. If you want to know if the driver was using the phone, you have to look at the phone.
Also, a person can be distracted by a phone without sending or receiving a message. For example they could be playing a game on the phone.
You're wrong there - telcos will log every time the data connection from a phones is used, what site it was from and how much data was consumed. How else do you think they bill for data usage.
You're right to say that you they wouldn't be able to tell whether non data consuming applications had been used but then again, neither would plod.
Your not keeping up with just how much the government spies on us. Check out #DRIP and its predecessor #RIPA.
But yes, you can do offline things on your phone to distract you just as much.
It's the giving it back part I don’t funderstand. Smashing them in front of their noses would be more appropriate.
Does it mean seize as in have the right to look at the phone -- and the driver is not allowed to refuse -- then keep it if the evidence points to it being used.
Rather than taking all phones for x days and checking them back in the lab?
The first seems sensible - the second would be a bit of a admin nightmare for the police
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