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Originally Posted by amarko5
and you contradict yourself Ceri  you say i pull over the the left lane , then go on to say i hate people who slow down whilst using mobiles  well i would assume your pulling over to the left lane would involve slowing down 
anyway it's foolish at any level and illegal as well. |
When I said slow down, I should off added "in a way that inhibits the flow of traffic". Specifically on country lanes, being sat in the outside lane of a motorway, oblivious to the person behind you flashing their lights, etc. I tend to cease overtaking, back off from 85-90 to about 70, and safely (observations, indication etc.) move into the inside lane, then click one button to answer, another for speakerphone (I can do this by "feel" without looking at the phone). If I'm in a car with a decent dash with non-slip coating, I won't even hold the thing, just answer and put it on the dash. If I can't do it safely, I let it ring off. My company has the unpleasent policy of the official line being "phones should never be used in cars" (so we can't get car kits/bluetooth headsets on expenses), whilst the unwritten one is, "but we'd better be able to contact you 24/7".
I really fail to see how that involves more distraction than, say, changing the radio station, turning the volume up/down, altering the heating, etc. I know theoretically all of those things should be done with the car stationary and safely pulled in. But, pragmatically speaking, everyone does it on the move and it very rarely results in accidents, unless they allow themselves to be distracted by it (IE looking at a CD multichanger to see what CD is on then changing tracks, all the while not looking at the road). Same goes for mobile phones. I really don't understand why mobile use is such a legal/social bugbear. People messing around with GPS on ipaqs/pdas that require you to look at the screen (touch screen so you can't operate it by touch) is something else that most people do while driving and I think that is a lot more distracting/dangerous, yet it doesn't get half the attention it deserves. Most of us have driven with someone who is entering a post code/address on the GPS with one hand driving with the other, eyes flitting between the screen and the road. It's a damn sight more unnerving than the driver merely talking to a third party who isn't in the car with you.
I completely understand that it's a lot easier to make a blanket ruling from a legal point of view, but I would hope the police would turn a blind eye if they saw it being done the way I described (not that I'd intentionally put that to the test you understand
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