Number one cause of road crashes is the mobile phone
Yes I know I keep going back on this subject, but it is a most important one and one that can never be pushed hard enough onto the users of mobile phones who are also drivers.
Therefore, over in the Land of Oz, that’s Australia and not the wizard’s home; New South Wales police are checking the mobile phone records of any driver involved in a fatal accident to see if the driver was talking or texting on their mobile phone at the time.
According to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, close to 20,000 drivers have been caught using their mobile phone whilst at the wheel of their vehicle, this number is up by 1300 within a singer year.
Australian police have now come to the conclusion that mobile phones are the number one suspect in crashes that involve inattention, and therefore according to senior Sergeant Peter Jenkins, officers now order the call records and text transcripts of mobile phones as a matter of routine after fatal or serious crashes.
So over in Australia it seems use of mobiles while driving is on the up. More stringent punishments are required I would think, such as banning the perpetrator from the use of mobile phones and driving indefinitely.
Source — skynews
Comments
One thought on “Number one cause of road crashes is the mobile phone”
On the surface, it seems fairly obvious to conclude that being on the phone was the cause of the accident by default, but what if indeed it was not the driver’s fault? E.g. the driver may have been using the speakerphone feature or using a headset or earpiece thus eliminating the need to actually hold the phone and thus be truly distracted.
Speech to texting isn’t very common yet so texting will indeed be a more obvious accident cause. However even with texting it can be hard to prove since it’d very difficult to match up the exact moment of the accident with texting. An on-the-scene officer would actually have to check the phone for a message that was in the process of being typed (and would be trivial for the texter to clear prior to police arrival, assuming he/she is conscious/able).
Any log records indicating that a message had been sent at or near the time of the accident could simply be dismissed as having been sent a few or several minutes prior to the accident (and in all likelihood this would probably be true).
Or what if something more mundane is the case? E.g., another driver ran a red light and slammed the side of the cell phone user’s vehicle? Such and accident would have nothing to do with cell phone usage.
My point is that mobile phone use in and of itself while driving is not a guarantee of guilt in a given accident. Drivers definitely need to be aware when driving. That means any and all distractions to safe driving should be eliminated or minimized, including hand held mobile phone use.
Police can/should notate if mobile phone use played a part in the accident, but they need to be careful in so determining.