There has been much hysteria about hands free phone use in the media. Whilst we are being presented with much evidence of phone use being involved in crashes, nothing we have seen distinguishes between hands-free and hand-held use or texting/surfing/emails so is meaningless.
ABD spokesman Nigel Humphries comments: “Anything can be allowed to become a distraction by a driver. It is the driver’s duty not to allow this to happen and this needs to be a core point in education and enforcement. Most drivers use good judgement as to when and where it is safe to allow themselves to take some of their attention from the road to talk to a passenger, glance at the scenery or at an instrument/screen on the dashboard or indeed make a hands-free call. There is however a small element of drivers who are either incompetent or simply reckless in their judgement. Such people often cannot even talk to a passenger without taking their eyes off the road. Instead of banning potential distractions one by one and punishing those who act responsibly, education and enforcement, as ever, must be aimed at the incompetent and the reckless.”
