Double penalties for motorists using mobiles

From 1 March 2017, UK drivers caught using a phone while driving will face tougher penalties. Under new legislation announced by the Department for Transport, offenders will receive six penalty points on their licence and a £200 fine, up from the previous three points and £100 penalty.
March 2, 2017 Read time: 2 mins

From 1 March 2017, UK drivers caught using a phone while driving will face tougher penalties. Under new legislation announced by the Department for Transport, offenders will receive six penalty points on their licence and a £200 fine, up from the previous three points and £100 penalty.

Motorists caught using their mobile twice or accruing 12 points on their licence will face magistrates’ court, being disqualified and fines of up to £1,000. New drivers, within two years of passing their test, risk having their licence revoked and lorry or bus drivers can be suspended if caught.

According to Shaun Helman, 491 TRL’s head of transport psychology, recent research by TRL suggests that between 10-30 per cent of road accidents in the EU are at least partly caused by distraction, and social media is an increasing risk. “Any task that involves holding a device, looking at it, and interacting with it during driving will adversely affect driving performance,” he says.

“Even simply speaking on a mobile phone can slow reaction times to sudden events, as much as being at the legal limit for blood alcohol in England (80mg/100ml of blood). Interacting with social media is even more demanding than simply speaking.”

The move has been generally welcomed by road safety charity, 4235 Brake, but it warns that the fine is still too low and it remains concerned about the police having enough resources to enforce the new law.

Gary Rae, campaigns director for Brake, said: “The increase in the points is very welcome. However, when you realise that you can be fined £1,000 for not having a TV licence, then the £200 fine for illegally using a mobile looks woefully inadequate.”
Brake also expressed concern about what it calls dwindling numbers of roads traffic police and called on the government to look again at this, and make roads policing a national priority.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Hawaii backs road user charging to replace fuel tax
    August 7, 2019
    Fuel tax revenue in Hawaii is falling - and even in paradise, someone has to pay. Adam Hill talks to Hawaii DoT’s Scot Uruda about a major change in the way the state funds road improvements All over the world, governments, transportation agencies and local authorities are casting around for new forms of revenue as the money from taxes imposed on fuel begins to trickle away. Spending is outstripping tax take as a combination of more efficient internal combustion engines and the increasing take-up of cars
    Read More
  • Sandra Phillips of Movmi: ‘We’re all trying to get people moving without a car’
    April 30, 2021
    Movmi founder Sandra Phillips talks to Adam Hill about why transport integration is sometimes a matter of trust – and how to empower women in transportation
    Read More
  • EdgeVis removes bandwidth barriers to mobile streamed video
    October 26, 2017
    A new generation of video compression can lower transmission costs of data and make streaming from mobile and body-worn cameras a reality, as Colin Sowman discovers. Bandwidth limitations have long been the bottleneck restricting the expanded use of video streaming for ITS, monitoring and surveillance purposes. Recent years have seen this countered to some degree by the introduction of ‘edge processing’ whereby ANPR, incident detection and other image processing is moved into (or close to) the camera, so
    Read More
  • When weather warnings get hyperlocal
    August 24, 2016
    David Crawford looks at new technologies to cope with the age-old problem of driving in bad weather. On the 10-year average, between 2005 and 2014 bad weather contributed to more than 1.5 million vehicle crashes in the US each year, resulting in more than 800,000 injuries and 7,400 deaths. These were the findings of analysis by Booz Allen Hamilton of NHTSA data which concluded that the loss of life, hospital treatment and damage to assets costs an annual average of $42bn.
    Read More

Highlighted Content