Tough new guidelines published by the Crown Prosecution Service recommend up to a 2 year jail sentence for drivers found guilty of dangerous driving caused by them using mobile phones or fiddling with their Sat-Nav or MP3 systems.
CPS says where there is clear evidence that using a phone handset or toying with the cars Sat-Nav or an MP3 player endangered other road users, the prosecution should now be for “dangerous driving” as opposed to the current norm which is “careless driving”.
“Dangerous driving” carries a much higher penalty than “careless driving” (hence the prison sentence).
Prosecutors at the CPS want these much tougher measures in an effort to get drivers to take the consequences of their actions much more seriously, as for at the moment, it’s claimed millions of motorists flaunt the law on a daily basis (if millions do it each day, where are all the accidents?)
Under these new proposals, those who cause death on the road while using their handsets or other similar equipment will face “death by dangerous driving charges” – which carries a maximum 14 year jail term and in the most serious cases could be prosecuted for manslaughter, which can carry a life sentence.
Whilst everyone who uses a vehicle wants to be as safe as they can be, you have to ask yourself what the next illegal thing will be? Perhaps tuning your radio, changing a CD or maybe even talking to your passenger. Certainly banning smoking in a car is a hot topic and these front seat fitted child seats which face backwards so the mother can watch their child must be top of the CPS target list for a future ban.
We have an illogical transport system that allows a short sited 90 year old driver in a 1970’s Cortina lacking all the modern driving aids found on new cars, to do the same speed as a fit 30 year old with 20/20 vision driving a state of the art 2 year old Mondeo. Both of these drivers can also do 70mph on our main roads, irrespective of the weather conditions, sun rain, snow, it matters not a jot.
It’s not possible to legislate for everything, but we in the UK are beginning to believe we can and it always seems to be the motorist which is taking the brunt of all this.
Pedestrians can wander around with the iPods in their ears, living in their own world and totally oblivious to the traffic on the road, yet complain when they are knocked over walking into the road. Cyclists can ignore every signal and every red traffic light and fail to give any kind of indication as to what direction they are heading (many with their iPods drowning out the traffic noise) yet this is all OK.
Reasonable behaviour seems to have gone out of the window where the motorist is concerned as we allow successive governments to treat us like children and impose so many rules on us that we might just as well give up and use the totally unreliable, expensive, dirty and uncomfortable public transport system they provide us with or buy ourselves a push bike.
Maybe that’s what they want?
