The police should permanently seize cellphones that are operated by the driver of a moving vehicle, says the car review website dogandlemon.com.
Editor Clive Matthew-Wilson, who is an outspoken road safety campaigner, says:
“First offence you lose your cellphone. Second offence you lose your cellphone and your number. Third offence you lose your cellphone and your number, plus your vehicle is impounded for seven days.”
Matthew-Wilson was commenting after the sentencing of truck driver Robert Wayne Clifford, who was using a cellphone when his truck ploughed into a van on SH1 near Blenheim last year, killing Kaiea Taubakoa instantly and injuring five others.
The impact shunted Taubakoa's van about 160 metres. Clifford, 54, already had four tickets for using a cellphone while driving, three while driving a truck.
This accident was one of many involving cellphones and commercial vehicles.
Sarah Hope Schmidt was last year sentenced to two years and four months in prison after crashing her 30-tonne truck and trailer unit into the back of stationary vehicles, killing another driver.
During her nearly-two-hour trip before the accident, Schmidt had been using her handheld phone for 44 minutes, or 38% of the entire journey. Schmidt looked up just two seconds before the crash on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway which killed 22-year-old Caleb Baker.
And nearly one quarter of young people admit using social media while driving. Some have had accidents as a result.
Matthew-Wilson adds it’s a myth that voice-operated smartphones are safer.
“As this video shows, any cellphone is dangerously distracting. But research by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety showed that drivers can be distracted by as long as 27 seconds after dialing, changing music or sending a text using voice commands on voice-operated smartphones.”
“Fines as a form of enforcement work for responsible drivers. However, multiple studies have shown that the threat of fines and disqualification have little or no effect on the highest risk drivers.”
Matthew-Wilson also rejects driver education campaigns as a way of changing behavior.
“50 years of research across the planet shows overwhelmingly that asking people to drive safely is an expensive waste of time.”
“There are still hundreds of thousands of drivers using cellphones while driving. They accept the risk of a fine in the same way they accept the risk of a parking ticket. These penalties clearly have done little to change behavior.”
“The government needs to stop ignoring this issue and take firm action to save lives.”
[1] Other studies have estimated that cellphone use while driving is responsible for between 8-25% of fatal accidents. All studies agree that cellphone use while driving is a major problem.
