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137 – Mobile phones and driving

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27 February 2009


Using a mobile phone while driving. Until now, we’ve all known that it was illegal to use a hand-held mobile and drive. But now the certainty of using even hands-free phones has been brought into question.

As you can read in our news story, the director of a business consultancy has been convicted of careless driving. Lynne-Marie Howden (43) was banned for a year and fined £2000 after crashing her Mercedes CLK into another car – the driver died at the scene. For story see: Director banned and fined after phone-driving crash.

Lynne-Marie Howden had been involved in conversations – on her hands-free mobile – with her boyfriend and a business colleague. And now, of course, we’ve had the Labour peer, Lord Ahmed, jailed for dangerous driving after he was involved in a fatal accident on the M1. In the period prior to the crash, Lord Ahmed had been texting on his phone.

The message, if we hadn’t got it yet, is that mobile phones and driving just don’t mix. In fact, research suggests talking on a hands-free is more dangerous than drink-driving.

A study by insurer Direct Line, carried out by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL), has revealed that driver reaction times – such as the time taken to apply the brakes or steer away from danger – are 30% slower when talking on a hands-free phone than when driving over the alcohol limit.

That’s a sobering thought.

I received an email from a friend of mine, Karl. He’s the ceo of a small business called Solution1. He’s recently sent an email to staff banning them holding work conversations while on the move. Even if using hands-free.

The government’s ‘Driving for better business’ campaign advice is this: safety-focused businesses should ban all employees from using mobile phones while driving.

It’s good advice. And probably time we all listened.

Best to shut up

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Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Business Car Manager (now renamed Business Motoring). Ralph writes extensively about the car and van leasing industry as well as wider fleet and company car issues. A former editor of What Car?, Ralph is a vastly experienced writer and editor and has been writing about the automotive sector for over 35 years.

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