Not before time - frontline police welcome phone ban

Sergeant Ashley Gore has seen a lot of bad driving and near-accidents involving cellphone users. Photo / Sarah Ivey

For frontline road police such as Sergeant Ashley Gore, the ban on using hand-held phones while driving could not have come soon enough.

"We have been waiting for the cellphone ban to come in because we have seen a lot of bad driving and so many near-misses," he said after an afternoon patrol in Central Auckland when he handed out as many safety pamphlets as infringement tickets for various offences.

Mr Gore was accustomed to not handling cellphones in cars when he arrived in 2002 from India, as that country banned the practice two years earlier, joining many others around the world.

The most prevalent offending observed by the Herald while accompanying him was a failure to wear seatbelts, although some ticketed for that were found to have cellphones without secure mountings on their dashboards, as required before they would have been allowed to use them.

But Mr Gore, a former teacher, said that before the ban began at midnight on Saturday he pulled over a driver to offer some cautionary advice after watching him accelerating from traffic lights while looking down at a phone.

Even before the ban, police were able to charge motorists caught driving erratically while on the phone with careless use of a motor vehicle.

Nor are professional drivers immune from accidents caused by having their attention diverted by cellphones.

Mr Gore recalled a dramatic pile-up on Auckland's Tamaki Drive after a tow-truck driver reached down to pick up a dropped phone, and then looked up just in time to see a line of parked cars looming in front of him.

"His lane had run out and he took out four parked cars."

A Transport Agency survey taken before the start of the cellphone ban found 96 per cent of those surveyed knew of it, but 18 other lesser-known rule changes were also introduced at the same time.

One requires seatbelts to be worn correctly, rectifying a loophole by which car occupants could have escaped fines even if not properly strapped in.

Police around New Zealand have been reporting a generally high level of compliance with the cellphone ban, during a "settling-in" period in which they have been advised to issue warnings rather than tickets for anything but blatant offending.

Waitemata road policing chief Superintendent John Kelly said his motorway patrols were reporting considerably less cellphone use than before the ban, although they thought that once the novelty wore off, some drivers may revert to old habits.

"But people are very conscious of it today," he said.

But nation road police manager Superintendent Paula Rose said she hoped new behaviour would become "embedded", assisted by education and enforcement.

"This is something police will have welcomed ... particularly those who have been in the position where they have been picking up the pieces," she said.

Drivers caught using hand-held phones are liable for an $80 fine and 20 licence demerit points.