Case Study: Operation Tramline
continued...
Mobile:Engaged impact
Following their involvement with the Mobile:Engaged
project...
“We’ve realised that the legislation is a big hurdle for us. Officers are inreasingly using the laws
relating to a driver not being in proper control of their vehicle, and driving without due care and
attention, to make sure that they can get their message across.” (RPU officer, Surrey).
Thinking of using Tramline?
Understanding the specifics of the problem means we are more likely to design interventions that work, so it
matters whether the issue here is mobile phone use (and whether that’s for work calls or personal calls), whether
it’s for watching videos (and whether that’s driven by boredom, for example). If we don’t understand why people
are engaging in the behaviour, we can’t be confident that our response is appropriate. Similarly, we need to
find out who is using their phone or other device. Is it local drivers, international drivers, are they from particular
companies? Is it older or younger drivers, new or experienced drivers? Are the companies we are catching big,
small, local, regional, national or international? Fortunately, you are likely to have plenty of wisdom about all these
topics via the officers who have been involved in catching offenders in the past and, if that’s a bit sketchier than
you’d like, officers can be tasked with finding out this information when they stop drivers in future. A final angle is to
consider the time and location profile of offending. Is it a daytime or nighttime problem, and is it actually a multi-
lane road issue (if not, you’ll need to look elsewhere in this compendium for alternatives to Tramline!).
It might not make sense to use things like social media posts to understand the issue. Whilst there are lots of
examples of Tramline catching drivers doing all sorts of things (like cooking a Pot Noodle), these are more likely to
be the attention-grabbing exceptions than the norm, so don’t assume they represent the real problem, or indeed
your particular problem.
Highways England run a suite of operations aimed at tackling issues associated with HGVs. It’s important to
make sure that all the efforts directed at a particular problem in a particular area are ‘lined up’ and reinforce
each other in terms of their message and approach. This can make it harder to separate out effects, however,
so you may want to consider introducing (and evaluating) different elements concurrently, not consecutively,
so you can build up a picture of which elements are working, and which may not be.
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