Glancing at your phone for a just few seconds can lead to tragedy.
Glancing at your phone for a just few seconds can lead to tragedy.
What will it take for drivers to leave their cellphones alone until they turn off their ignition and for every person in a car to belt up?
The statistics from a road policing operation last week tell us what we already knew.
Divers just can't leave their cellphone alone for five minutes. I see it nearly every day when I'm driving to and from work or when I'm walking to the supermarket.
More than 200 drivers were caught on their cellphones or not wearing a seatbelt last week. Imagine how many weren't caught.
Nobody seems to give a hoot. They text, they call, they answer their ringing phone, concentrating on the person on the other end rather than the road in front of them.
The penalty for being caught on your phone while driving is an $80 fine and 20 demerit points.
The problem with this type of offending — and it is offending, it's breaking the law, is that in order to stop it police have to put a lot of time and resources into it. Resources that could be better used in a lot of other areas.
How many times have we heard people complain about how long it takes for police at attend a crime scene. It makes sense that if they didn't have to run around trying to stop people doing such a simple thing as not using their cellphone while driving they would have time to attend to more serious matters
I've also heard people say that speed cameras are just a means of "revenue gathering" for police. This could well be a smart way to gather quite a bit of revenue.
Linda Hall is Hawke's Bay Today's premium content editor.
Double the fine and the demerit points and put some more cameras in — not speed cameras but mobile cameras. Hitting people in the pocket a bit deeper might just stop at least some of the offenders.
Repeat offenders may well find themselves with no mobility because of demerit points.
What did surprise me though was the number of people caught not wearing a seatbelt. I don't get it. Why would you not put your seat belt on? Do they think is it makes them look tougher without one?
A constable at the latest policing operation said "if you get into a serious crash, you have got a 40-60 per cent chance of surviving it, if you are wearing a seatbelt."
It takes just seconds to put on.
Winter brings with it more hazardous road conditions one of which I have noticed in the last couple of weeks on my early outings to the gym. Cars with just one headlight — it's so confusing for oncoming cars and such an easy thing to check.
Finally, the latest ads on television showing the worried passengers is one that many people can relate to. The "Share the Speed" ads remind us that our cargo is precious and they have no control over their fate when a driver decides to speed.
I don't mind being called a back- seat driver at all. I have been known to remind Mr Neat to check his speed. He takes that quite well, It's when I start "suggesting" that he should have gone this way instead of that or helpfully suggest which park to use that his jaw tightens and without taking his eyes off the road, reminds me that he "drives all day, five days a week" and unlike me he "doesn't need a map to find his way around".
The way things are going with technology these days it won't be long before cars won't start until everyone inside it is belted up.
Surely Samsung, Apple and the other big players in the smartphone industry could come up with an app that stops drivers holding their phone while driving. Now there's a challenge.
Linda Hall is Hawke's Bay Today's premium content editor.
