Background to this compendium
The issue of mobile phone use
The issue of mobile phone use by drivers is only just beginning to receive
the attention it deserves. Unfortunately it already has many of the hallmarks
of past battles, with drink driving and speeding for example, as it shares
many of the same features: relatively widespread disregard for the law and
the reasoning behind it, limited or only localised enforcement capability,
and a population unused to (and sometimes hostile to) police attention in
the role of offender¹ ². The challenges posed by distracting technologies
in vehicles are only going to increase in number and complexity, and we
certainly can’t wait for autonomous vehicles to arrive in the hopes they will
solve all our problems.
The Mobile:Engaged research project
With sharing and improving practice at the heart of the research project,
our aim was to understand the wealth of innovative activity in the area of tackling mobile phone use by drivers,
and to support that activity by bringing academics and practitioners together. We identified and mapped a range
of innovations being implemented throughout the UK, then contacted the people behind them and met with
them to offer advice on using research to generate research-informed practice, and on methods for evaluating
their activities. None of this would have been possible without the Road Safety Trust, who saw the potential in our
approach and funded this project. We are very grateful for their support.
The Mobile:Engaged compendium
Based on the outcomes of our many meetings, we have developed this compendium to help share what we have
learned, and what we have contributed, with others that we weren’t able to meet. We hope it will be useful for a
range of professionals in areas of policing, road safety, education, engineering and beyond.
“Our meeting with the Mobile:Engaged
team was very helpful in encouraging us to
think about the ways that research could inform
what we were planning to do.” “Your recommendations will be invaluable in
helping us to develop a new, more
co-ordinated and streamlined young driver
intervention for young people in South Yorkshire.”
Sgt. West Midlands Police
Road Harm Reduction Team Safer Roads Manager
South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership
¹ Wells, H., (2008). The techno-fix versus the fair cop: Procedural (in) justice and automated speed limit enforcement. The British Journal of Criminology,
48(6), pp.798-817.
² Wells, H. and Wills, D., (2009). Individualism and identity: Resistance to speed cameras in the UK. Surveillance and Society.
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