Rachel Smalley: Should distracted drivers be treated like drunk drivers?

Driving while distracted can be as dangerous as driving drunk. Photo: File

Here's a question for you. Should distracted drivers be treated the same as drunk-drivers?

We throw the book at drink-drivers, should we also throw the book at those who drive with a device? And I ask this because I was driving this week, and an SUV drove right across the front of me. And if I hadn't hit the brakes, he would have driven straight into me.

And the driver never saw me - not even after I'd braked - because he was talking on his phone. He was holding it to his ear, and his hand and his smartphone had blocked his peripheral vision.

To me, he might as well have been drunk. He posed the same threat to life because if you think about what happens when a driver is drunk. They're distracted, they don't react as quickly, they can be unaware of their speed, they fail to indicate or they make poor decisions - and that's what happens when you're driving and using a phone too. The man who drove across the front of me couldn't have indicated even if he'd wanted to, because he had one hand on his phone on his ear, and the other hand on the wheel.

I'm guilty of using my phone in the car. I often pick it up when I stop at the lights and scroll through emails. Why? I don't know. Habit, perhaps. But I'm making a conscious effort to break that habit. But I have a hands-free in my car and I can button it on or off, on the steering wheel of my mini so I never drive one-handed with the phone to my ear.

Yesterday, even worse, I was driving over the Auckland Harbour Bridge and a Suzuki Swift nipped past me with a young woman at the wheel and she was texting. Texting, speeding and crossing the Harbour Bridge. Just madness.

And that's why I think you need to increase the penalties for using a device while driving. At the moment, it's $80 and 20 demerit points. How is that a deterrent? Make it $500 or $1000 because if you're distracted and driving, your vehicle becomes a weapon.

Given our road toll, I wonder just how many accidents are fuelled by drivers distracted by their phones.

In the US, road fatalities had fallen, but now they're up by eight per cent and part of the blame has been directed at drivers who are on Facebook, making calls, Snapchatting or taking selfies apparently.

In New York, they're talking about introducing a textalyser which is device that police can use on your phone to see if you were texting or emailing or using social media at the time of the accident. They'd use the textalyser in the same way that they use a breathalyser when they arrive at the scene of an accident.

Smart idea, isn't it?

As I said, fining people $80 which is what we do at the moment is hardly a deterrent. Increase the penalty and by a lot. $500 or $1000 because using your phone while driving, I think, is potentially as life-threatening as driving when you're drunk.