I have posted several articles over the past few years on the very serious issue of people texting and generally being distracted by their mobile devices while driving. One post covered the terrible case where in February, a 22-year-old man who allegedly took his eyes off the road for up to 20 seconds to use his phone seriously injured two policemen setting up a random breath test. That 20 seconds of mobile phone use in a car travelling at 60km/h was equivalent to driving blind for 330 metres, Parliament was told. As a result, one of the police officers had part of his leg amputated. See http://www.allanmanning.com/phones-and-driving-do-not-mix/
Even on Saturday as I drove out of my own street onto a round about, I was nearly involved in a collision with a driver who was clearly not watching the road. Thankfully my wife and I could see the driver was not watching the road and we avoided the certain collision.
I therefore welcome the new measures taken by the New South Wales government to curb this very real problem. That is people simply do not realise there addiction to social media, text messaging and emailing is putting people's lives, including their own at risk. This is despite more than 40,000 people beingfined by NSW Police for illegal mobile phone use in the 2016-17 financial year.
In trials by One Task, a Sydney technology company, of speed cameras to spot illegal use the cameras detected more than 400 Sydney-siders using phones illegally in a 12-hour period.
NSW will be the first place in the world to introduce speed-camera-style technology to detect and crack down on illegal mobile phone use by motorists and while it will no doubt have a revenue benefit to the government, I do believe the primary reason for the new laws is to reduce the numbers of people killed or seriously injured on the road.
He new rules have been passed by NSW Parliament and also extended mobile drug testing to include cocaine and toughen penalties for drivers under the influence of drugs.
While motor vehicle policies have an exclusion for drivers being under the influence of alcohol or drugs only a few have introduced exclusions for texting while driving. While I strongly support such an exclusion, I think it should be in line with the under the influence exclusion and still protect the owner of the vehicle but make the driver ultimately responsible for their dangerous actions.
Katherine (08) 7919 7019
2/46 Chardon St