Whilst other offences, such as ‘driving without due care
and attention’ or ‘failure to maintain proper control of a
vehicle’ may be used by the police for occasions when
driving is poor but the 2003 law is unhelpful, this can
get complicated. Monitoring of ‘the problem’ of mobile
phone use by drivers becomes more difficult as some
‘use’ might be hidden in the statistics relating to these
other offences - but we cannot assume that all these
offences involved a mobile phone.
Just as importantly, it is necessary for us to question
what members of the public believe is meant by the
term ‘use’. Most drivers won’t know the specifics of the
law, and will have got their understanding of what they
‘can’ and ‘can’t’ do from shorter, more easily accessible
forms of information, such as that provided in the
media, and from talking to other road users.
The fact that the law only relates to handheld use
may encourage drivers to consider ‘use’ to only mean
physically demanding, active tasks, such as holding a
phone to one’s ear or writing a text message, whereas
other more passive (but distracting) actions such as
glancing at a phone to see who is calling, or reading a
text, may be less likely to be considered problematic.
Similarly, in 2018, 25% of those questioned admitted
to using a handheld mobile phone while driving, but a
larger 39% admitted to using a handheld mobile phone
while stationary with the ignition on¹ - which is also,
technically, driving.
Those that do not consider themselves to be ‘users’ or
‘drivers’ for these reasons may well ignore road safety
education aimed at reducing mobile phone use. They
also won’t appear in self-report statistics.
“I don’t USE my mobile phone while
driving. I just check my texts and choose
what music I want to listen to”.
Deconstructing the law:
“Drive” - in 2003, most cars didn’t have the
assistive technologies we have today. Do drivers
understand when they are actually ‘driving’?
“Using” - compare phone functionality from 2003
with what we can do know.
“Hand held” - do wearable devices count as held?
Why is hands-free use not illegal?
“Mobile telephone” - many cars have full phone
functionality built-in to the dashboard. What about
tablets that are not sold as phones but allow video
calling?
One of the challenges you may face in relation
to action targeted at discouraging hands-free
mobile phone use is the suggestion that it is
no different to talking to a passenger. However,
research has shown that sharing the environment
with a driver allows passengers to manipulate
their conversation based upon the driving context 2
(what we may call shared situational awareness).
However, an individual on the other end of a
phone is not aware of complex and evolving
driving situations. They are therefore less likely to
moderate their conversation based on the extent
to which the driver needs to concentrate.
¹ RAC (2018). RAC Report on Motoring 2018. Available from: https://www.rac.co.uk/pdfs/report-on-motoring/rac10483_rom-2018_content_web
2
Drews, F.A., Pasupathi, M. and Strayer, D.L., 2008. Passenger and cell phone conversations in simulated driving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied,
14(4), pp.392-400.
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