In a recent court hearing, a district judge ruled that even switching off an alarm on the phone was considered as “using the phone”.
The driver wasn’t making a call, but a police officer saw the drivers hand and his thumb move across the keys. The judge ruled that it didn’t matter what the driver was doing to the phone, as any use of the phone, such as switching an alarm off, constituted “using a hand held phone”.
Whilst this ruling isn’t binding on other courts, it has to make us all aware as to the way courts are viewing these matters.
Logically, based on this ruling, anyone who owns a multi-purpose mobile cant use any of those facilities if it involves you touching the phone to activate them and that therefore this includes using GPS mapping, or even switching it on to facilitate a hands free Bluetooth call, or even anything that’s involved in playing music when connected to your car, that involves the handset being touched (even just plugging it in when you are moving is therefore illegal).
We all know that we shouldn’t hold a phone to our ear to make a call, and that we certainly shouldn’t text whilst driving, and none of us surely would do that. But this “jobs worth” ruling seems simply ridiculous as surely, searching for a station on a fixed car radio, or inserting a CD are of equal distraction.
These type of decisions take away all credibility from our judicial system as we all become presumed as blithering idiots that need a good slap if we dare to do anything outside of the exact letter of the law. What happened to being “reasonable”? Some say the law is an ass; well looks like Eeyore just arrived in town.
