Mobile Phones whilst driving... 1082

A bit of a sweeping statement. I don't think that using a phone in itself will cause an accident. It may contribute to an accident if attention is sufficienty distracted from the road. But a driver who will allow himself to be sufficiently distracted by a phone but carry on driving regardless, is likely to allow him (or her) self to be dangerously distracted by 1001 other things.

I agree to some extent, if I see someone driving unnecessarily slowly, or hogging or wandering over lanes, quite often they are holding a phone. But I also see many people driving like that who aren't holding a phone, or subject to any other obvious distraction. And, I've seen drivers holding a phone who have got their wits about them and respond very well to other drivers unexpected actions.

You can play any game you want with statistics. Probably, 30% of vehicles involved in accidents are white. Great! let's ban all white cars and reduce accident rates by 30%.

In my case, I would have expected that the officer who stopped me, responding immediately to his strange movements behind me, would have immediately seen to the drunk driver reported to him on a roundabout 100m away.

If officers are available to watch the traffic, they should be placed at serious problem areas, and target simple bad driving, in particular, lunatic driving, and lack of awareness and the intentions of other drivers.