Mobe-orists?
If that horror catches on, El Reg will have a lot to answer for.
Mobe-orists, beware: Stroking while driving could land you a £4k fine
Drivers who stupidly use their mobile phones while barrelling along Britain's roads could be hit with much bigger fines if measures unveiled today by the government come into force. The Ministry of Justice wants tougher financial penalties to clamp down on criminals who flout the rules: for example, motorists who use their …
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: GPS?
"I do hope that using your mobe dash-mounted as a GPS unit is excepted from the offences..."
That has technically been illegal for years. Having anything but a rear view mirror within the swept area of windscreen (where your wipers...err...wipe) is illegal and would be an MOT failure if you left it on (same with furry dice or those feet air fresheners people seem to like at the moment).
Most people would never be pulled up on it, but if it was proven you had that setup and were involved in an accident that was your fault it would most likely lead to a higher penalty. (advice taken from the mouth of a traffic officer).
The way around that is to simply use an air vent or cup holder mount.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:25 GMT The Bit Wrangler
Re: GPS?
I've got a dash-mounted mobile phone that's nowhere near the swept-area. The clue is the name "dash-mount" rather than windscreen-mount. It's next to the stereo below the line of the top of the dash.
The number of pillocks I see on the roads with windscreen mounts IN FRONT OF THEIR FACE scares the crap out of me.
I'm pretty sure there was a court ruling allowing mounted phone-based GPS, it would be madness to say that GPS units were ok but phones weren't. I wouldn't want to be without Waze, the amount of sitting in jams it's saved me over the years...
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:31 GMT Don Jefe
Re: GPS?
Yep. There is to be nothing in the space below the rear view mirror or top of the dashboard. The law (in the US anyway) actually uses the lower termination point of the gradient tint at the top of the windshield, not the mirror, but the effect is the same.
Cup holders and vents work well, so do the cradles for the old hardwired 'car phones'. If you want it to look fancy and don't want to carve up your dash and mold a cavity into your dash there are several companies that make vehicle specific accessory mounting brackets that attach with the factory installed screws hidden behind the bezel of your dash (often the screws that hold the radio). Law enforcement suppliers have all kinds of super cool stuff for mounting interior accessories, and you don't need to be law enforcement to buy from them.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: GPS?
Doesn't help when you are using your phone as a blackbox recorder for recording traffic, you'll just get uninteresting videos of your dashboard (and after having someone report that I crashed into the back of them recently when i was no where near led me to a mount that stays attached and I record every trip).
However mine is mounted at the top of the windscreen, roughly level with the mirror and only obscures my view of passing aircraft.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 16:11 GMT Don Jefe
Re: GPS?
'Only obscures your view of passing aircraft'.
Fool! You have just irrevocably sealed your fate. Precept #7 of Don Jefe's Guide to Destroying the Universe Before It Destroys You states the following: 'The Universe will overlook the internal thoughts of individuals but will act with supreme malevolence if you give voice to your braggadocio and blasé regard for its limitless power'.
What that means for you, unfortunately, is that you will perish when an airplane falls on your car. There's no escaping that fact now, so you shouldn't let it worry you. Perhaps you should wager some money on that. While the winnings won't do you any good, the bookies are going to give insanely bad odds against, so a $100 investment will make your family wealthy and perhaps ease their suffering due to your loss.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:55 GMT Flocke Kroes
Re: GPS?
I am sufficiently tall that I have to scrunch down to see the road ahead. Even then, a quarter of the windscreen gives me an excellent view of the bonnet. The GPS talks to me, so I have no reason to look at it while driving. The reason why I want it under the windscreen is so it gets a good signal from the satellites. The GPS does not talk to me about signal strength. For that, I would have to look at it. What wonderful laws we have.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 17:27 GMT VinceH
Re: GPS?
"I am sufficiently tall that I have to scrunch down to see the road ahead. Even then, a quarter of the windscreen gives me an excellent view of the bonnet."
I'm not particularly tall, so it's nowhere near that much - but my 'phone' holder is mounted on the windscreen at the bottom, and the only thing it (and the phone, on those rare times I actually use it as a sat-nav*) obscures is my view of the bonnet.
* The rest of the time, I don't consider it a phone holder, but a steak slice holder; I usually buy one on the way to the office for breakfast, and I put it above the vents and switch them on for the last couple of miles to keep it warm. The holder is low enough that it holds the steak slice in place.
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 06:03 GMT big_D
Re: GPS?
@Will that is one of the reasons I sold my Verso. I couldn't see the road in right hand corners (Germany), because my seat put my head level with the mirror. I had to duck down to look around corners and look at traffic lights.
I now have a car with a smaller mirror, it is mounted higher / the seat is lower and I have a panorama windscreen, so no more ducking to look around corners or look at the traffic lights*. It might also explain why the insurance is 50% lower than the Verso. :-P
* in Germany the traffic lights are only on your side of the junction; I think it is done as a deterent to stop people trying to get a jump start on a green light by watching the other direction change to red.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
For some definition of "use"
I hope that means holding it in your hand rather than just interacting with it while it's mounted in a cradle. Even then, will interacting with it to make a call be different to interacting with it to use the satnav app? Are telephone calls in vehicles becoming the new demon we are all obliged to loathe?
And while we're looking at preventative measures, how about *offering* all existing drivers an advanced driving option, and *requiring* all new drivers to take a course after one year of experience. The result will be safer, more aware drivers. It is about that, not just making tons of money, right?
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:15 GMT Pascal Monett
Re: For some definition of "use"
Let's make one thing clear : anything that takes your eyes off the road for any amount of time is a risk; the faster you drive, the higher the risk.
So, if by "interacting" with a phone you mean connecting a call or hanging up, then I will grudgingly admit that that should be fine, in a cradle or Bluetooth mode.
But as far as anything else is concerned, I'm sorry, your hands are supposed to be on the wheel and your eyes on the road at all times. If you can slip in texting or anything else than checking a GPS screen for your position, you're not doing it right.
Bah, soon The Google will be driving us all around anyways. We will thus be free to happily provide all of our movement details to the infinitely-tentacle data slurper in exchange for being able to HEY! I'M TXTING IN A CAR!
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 02:59 GMT DiViDeD
Re: For some definition of "use"
"Content is also important"
Absolutely! take pr0n for example. Depending on which side of the divide you drive*, you are faced with the choice of using your non fap hand to change gear and crashing into a tree, or using your fap hand, thus losing <ahem> momentum. It's a sticky choice. Although if it's sticky, you've probably already freed up your fap hand for driving duties
The one with the stains, obviously.
* And, of course, on whether you subscribe to the dextrous or sinistrous side of the handedness debate.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: For some definition of "use"
"But as far as anything else is concerned, I'm sorry, your hands are supposed to be on the wheel and your eyes on the road at all times"
Really? So no longer are we allowed to by manual shift cars, use car air vents, pull down the sun shade? We can no longer look at the speedometer, fuel gauge, warning lights?
Get off your high horse. There is nothing wrong with taking your eyes off the road for a split second when safe to do so or removing a hand from the steering wheel - emergency services have been doing it for years to answer the radio, turn on blues and twos etc (yes, not all, as some newer cars have Vox and foot mounted horns etc). Just drive sensibly, responsibly, relaxed and don't be an idiot and you'll be one of the safest on the road.
Anyone on here berating others for doing xyz when driving, I bet I could spend a hour in a car with them and notice a number of mistakes or things you could do safer (exactly the same as some could riding along with me).
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 16:34 GMT Don Jefe
Re: For some definition of "use"
A drivers license has some of the same pitfalls as a General Contractors License or certificate in a specific skill or technology.
What you get are people who can pass a test, and who confuse following a checklist and actually performing (thing) well. That certainly not to say that everybody with a drivers license or certificate is an idiot, they aren't. But there are plenty of people who never build in the basic skills and behaviors required to gain that license or certificate.
They simply don't think about doing anything they weren't expressly told to do, or not do. The result is that those people sometimes view the behavior of others as dangerous when they are not if they are being performed by someone with experience.
Now, that doesn't mean that there's no threshold beyond which certain behaviors aren't dangerous. There are lots of things that are unreasonably dangerous regardless of ones skills or experience. But at the same time, there is no reason to not develop the ability to do things like manipulate interior controls and expand your field of view beyond what is provided by the windshield and mirrors.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 16:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: For some definition of "use"
Let's make one thing clear : anything that takes your eyes off the road for any amount of time is a risk; the faster you drive, the higher the risk.
Absolutely, and for that reason alone I'd see the Tomtom app banned. Its UI makes it impossible to operate without taking quite a bit of time off the road because there are many, many things it insists on having confirmed for no reason I can discern than being frigging awkward.
I'm not quite sure who designs the UI at TomTom but he/she/it must live near work and never travel to unknown places.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:43 GMT Vic
Re: For some definition of "use"
> there should be some form of retest of licenced drivers every 10 years
Every 10 years might prove to be unworkable, but there should definitely be a check-up.
I passed my test when I was 17. I don't need to do a damn thing to keep my licence until my 70th birthday - and even then, I only need to *self-certify* that my eyesight is still up to snuff.
Compulsory eye-tests would be a good thing all round.
Vic.
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 01:58 GMT Alan Brown
Re: For some definition of "use"
"Compulsory eye-tests would be a good thing all round."
New Zealand introduced them 15 years ago (you do them each time you renew your photo license) and yes, they do work well.
There's no reason 10 year retests would be unworkable, but even just giving the courts/police the ability to order a driving test resit would help.
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 06:08 GMT big_D
Re: For some definition of "use"
That is why most cars have bluetooth built in these days. You press a button on the steering wheel / column to accept the calls and I can make a call over my radio, so I don't need to take my phone out of my pocket. Likewise the phone offers to read SMS to me over the bluetooth connection when I am in the car; I can even dictate an answer.
That said, I don't like telephoning in the car, but luckily that is very rare. The same for using the navigation software, I think I have used it twice in the last 3 years.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:11 GMT Anonymous Coward
I think that the aim is to eventually ban so much as thinking about your phone while driving, whether it's mounted on your windscreen or not. This is a win-win for the government;
* Fewer car crashes (that has to be a good thing)
* More sales in yet-to-be-revealed new driver-legal technology
* Better case for self-driving cars
And of course, this doesn't affect MPs as they have tax-payer-funder chauffeurs and/or trains to carry them around the country.
I have observed, however cynical I am at the government's motives for doing anything, that pretty much every idiot that does something idiotic on a roundabout or a junction is on their phone, thinking that if they talk on it like they do on The Apprentice then they won't get fined.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:18 GMT auburnman
The one that bugs me is the tacked on one about the quadrupled fine for speeding on the motorway. I'm not apologising for speeding, but long straight wide stretches of road outside areas of high pedestrian traffic seem to be almost exactly the wrong area to focus/crack down on, and smacks of meeting targets rather than protecting the public.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 16:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
The one that bugs me is the tacked on one about the quadrupled fine for speeding on the motorway
If you guys cared enough to get organised I'd run a campaign to stick to 10mph UNDER the speed limit for a few weeks. I'd suspect that would ruffle more feathers than just whinging about the fine, because it would
a - at one stroke remove a solid block of income which law enforcement should not have in the first place (it removes a lot of bias and "creativity" - a bit like parking fines are a complete mess too),
b - create enough traffic problems to demonstrate why we need the higher speeds (and even higher, in the Netherlands they now have 80 mp/h as national limit) and
c - send a unified signal to the politicians. Politicians are never worried about people whinging, but when enough people band together that equates to a threat to their votes, and THAT they worry about.
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 00:01 GMT P. Lee
> If you guys cared enough to get organised I'd run a campaign to stick to 10mph UNDER the speed limit for a few weeks.
They do this in Australia. "Wipe off 5" is one of the most bizarre campaigns by a road authority authority I've ever seen. Apart from the fact that the speed limits in Victoria are already low, and weirdly lower on the motorway than on A-roads, essentially the road authority is saying that it got its speed-limits wrong. Then if everyone was driving 5k slower, would there still be benefit to wiping off 5? When exactly should we stop taking off another 5?
All this is slightly moot as you often get people who have wiped off 20 in the outside lane of the motorways.
Have you considered the possibility that the fines have gone up to compensate for more people not breaking the law?
Quadrupling the fine speaks of some other issue than road-safety being at stake - that's a massive hike which does seem disproportionate.
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 07:03 GMT big_D
More common in Europe seems to be the adoption of "1 month's salary" for excessive speeding. That generally means everybody gets hit similarly hard - depending on the amoung of "disposable" income and how much you have managed to save.
In Germany you also get an automatic 1 - 3 month ban for excessive speed - and someone got nicked for doing 120 through a village last week! :-O
To the point about motorways being away from high pedestrian traffic yada yada yada, here in Germany more and more of the Autobahn network is being put under speed restrictions, either blanket or time based, for safety reasons; although they also seem to find that putting up successively lower speed restrictions for parts of the road that are falling apart is more economical than resurfacing.
On unrestricted sections, you can be done for driving 140km/h like a wombat, whilst somebody driving at 300+km/h might not get a ticket, because they are not causing a danger to other road users. But where there are speed restrictions in place, the police tend to be very sharp about pulling excessive speeders over.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
What's the point in having judges (magistrates even). If all they can do is read a matrix of number of offenses vs. crime, and dish out the relevant penalty?
It concerns me more that we, apparently, cant trust our judges et al to deliver an appropriate verdict and punishment off their own judgement, than the idea of someone using a phone in a car.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 15:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
"What's the point in having judges (magistrates even). If all they can do is read a matrix of number of offenses vs. crime, and dish out the relevant penalty?"
I think you'll find that the system is a little bit more nuanced than that. What's being talked about is the maximum fines here, and those are rarely imposed (in the same way that maximum prison sentences are rarely imposed). The magistrates do have some discretion, some use it well, some use it poorly. What will be of interest is how these pan out in practice - if the maximum fine quadruples, does the average also?
On the one hand this is not about deterrence or punishment, its simply a reflection of a wider move amongst governments who have realised that they can raise more money through punitive fines - the Spanish government did something similar recently, and I think the French also. Think of it as a selective stealth tax. Of course, it is targeted at you and me. The true riff raff don't pay fines anyway, the rich won't give a toss about these fines still (a days pay for a Premiership footballer, and that's if his lawyer can't get him off), and as Huhne demonstrated, politicians believe that the law doesn't apply to them.
The next step will be far more widespread use of all types of enforcement cameras, but with a particular emphasis on speed cameras, because that's one of the easiest things to target. As usual poor or deliberately dangerous driving will be ignored because that's too difficult.
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 16:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
The next step will be far more widespread use of all types of enforcement cameras, but with a particular emphasis on speed cameras, because that's one of the easiest things to target. As usual poor or deliberately dangerous driving will be ignored because that's too difficult.
That's because the latter cannot be automated, that requires real people who need paying. Just out of interest, have the fines gone up for damaging cameras? Just an innocent enquiry :p
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Tuesday 10th June 2014 16:08 GMT Valeyard
Re: GOOD
I'm afraid ukgnome is correct.
On a double decker, alongside your car, I can pretty much pinpoint which social media app it is you're using from its colour scheme
In fact the police up here are using lorry cabs for just this reason, if they see you using a phone for typing or reading (as opposed to the more-obvious calling) they can see and photograph it easier
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 11:17 GMT NogginTheNog
Re: GOOD
If you are driving close enough to someone to see them doing that, you're driving FAR too close to them at 70mph...
I've started watching traffic coming the other way when I'm stopped at road junctions, and a depressing number of people seem to be using a phone, either pressed to their ear or gazing down at it. And junctions are the sort of places where you should really be giving most of your attention to what's going on outside of the car!
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Wednesday 11th June 2014 08:53 GMT auburnman
Re: GOOD
"It's even more scary when you don't have a big metal cage around you."
I know how you feel, I walk home from work alongside a busy road at rush hour. Luckily I'm not on the road itself but the number of times I've seen cyclists almost KO'd is insane. I'm occasionally tempted to become a Glasshole for the express purpose of snitching on nutter drivers.
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