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StraelGuy wrote:

Agreed! What's the point of having fairly draconian mobile phone laws now that the great unwashed have worked out there's basically no such thing as road policing any more due to police funding shortages and austerity?! 10 years ago you'd have a few days every autumn where the nights were drawing in where you'd see cars with defective lights before people got them fixed. Nowadays it's a joke, I've seen loads of cars with no working rear lights at all except the high level brake light and the idiots don't care. They know the chance of getting stopped by an actual police car is just about zero.

Actually I think a lot of the time drivers have their lights on for daytime running only, which means the front sidelights are on but not the tail lights, for a lot of cars. I see this regularly as well.

But with regard to mobile phone use by drivers, I don't think the penalties are in line with the risk. Using the penalty for DUI of a 12 month ban as a base line, surely the penalty for using a cellphone at the wheel should at least be the same. Given that using a cellphone to send a text while driving increases the risk of a crash by a factor of 23 (according to research by the TRL - it is on the website), then surely the penalty should be higher still, say 24 month ban and a compulsory retest.

Unless the penalty matches the offence, people simply won't take it seriously. And yes, the minimal traffic policing doesn't help either. We can than Theresa May for the big cuts to police budgets remember.