To think that if it is illegal to use a mobile phone while driving a vehicle, it must be made illegal to push a pram?

Average weight of an adult + powerchair: 130kg (80kg + 50kg)
Average weight of an adult + wheelchair: 95kg (80kg + 15kg)

Top speed of powerchair: 4mph unless class 3 (8mph). I'm ignoring not in class, which can be far heavier, wider and faster and require a driving licence and to be driven on the road in all cases.

Now, if a class 3 user is distracted whilst travelling at 8mph, apart from the fact that they'd already be committing an offence if they are on the pavement at that speed, there would be a risk of 130kg hitting somebody with sufficient force to hurt another pedestrian.

Somebody pushing a manual chair and hurting the legs of the person sitting or causing them to fall/topples over is unpleasant and may cause more serious injuries due to medical conditions or general physical vulnerability - and would be obviously very, very frightening. But that's on the basis of weight, size and specific medical risks.

Compare to the average weight of a buggy - 15kg. Plus child aged 0-3, being up to about 14kg, travelling at up to about 3mph.

There just isn't the same level of risk of severe harm being caused.

This afternoon I rounded a junction on a green light as a young woman, on her phone, stepped off the pavement. A junction with pedestrian lights, they either hadn’t activated or hadn’t waited for. How I stopped in time I don’t know. Her friend, also on the phone, clearly felt I needed severe admonishment.

This thread is bonkers 😁

I mean I am pretty sure if you carelessly barge into someone with a pram, trolley, or any other object and they get injured they can probably make a claim against you using a solicitor, and if they died from their injuries I expect it would be investigated as involuntary manslaughter, and it would be down to the judge and jury to decide whether or not the person pushing the thing was being unreasonably reckless or whether the death was a freak accident.

That would be different from someone deliberately ramming a person with intent to injure which presumably would be investigated as assault from the start.

I know other countries have more explicit laws about this kind of thing whereas the UK it's more of a small claims court thing so it probably costs more to hire the solicitor than you'd get back in compensation anyway.

I have often thought that television producers whose programmes have someone driving and chatting away at a camera, e.g. Worlds Most Dangerous Roads, Antiques Road Trip, Bangers and Cash, Police something or other, etc. should reconsider what they are doing... unless they just don't care. 😟

Well I’m sure someone has probably been killed by a pram at some point in history. But then I’m sure someone has probably died by walking into a lamppost and banging their head whilst distracted on their phone. Shall we make it illegal to use a mobile phone whilst walking along? You can’t legislate against all risks, no matter how unlikely.

Pram driving licence. Mandatory annual pram inspections. Prison sentence if you let your child unbuckle themselves in a pushchair.

Also make it illegal to use a phone in all dangerous situations: going upstairs, in the vicinity of an active toaster, on the sofa in the absence of a safety rail.

Every post you make is more bstshit than the previous 🙄

Ill take my chance with a phone distracted pram pusher over a phone distracted driver any day

Unless of course you have statistics to show how many people are killed or suffer life changing injuries being run into by a pram 🙄

No judgement? Please, your pants are giving you a full wedgy 😂

So you think people should stop on the spot to take a phone call? So what about walking with a friend, should I not talk to them as that could be a distraction? You can see how this is all becoming a bit ridiculous surely

Big batshit opinions from little batshit opinions grow too

The difference between what?

Either someone is in a motorised vehicle that doesn't use the pavement, and can travel much faster than a pedestrian, or they're just a person pushing, pulling whatever contraption at walking pace.

One of those could likely cause death or severe injury, the other wouldn't under normal circumstances.

If I am standing still to take a call on a mobile phone and someone walks into me because they are distracted by something and they injure themselves should I be liable @llizzie? Is the distraction or the possession of a mobile the deciding factor?

@llizzie Government data from 2022 in the category “distraction in vehicle” says there were 76 fatalities and 2616 injuries that year. Within that category incidents where driver mobile phone use was the cause of collisions there were 22 deaths and 652 injuries. Just taking one year as a sample those are significant numbers.

There is no information about the number of deaths and injuries to pedestrians where using a mobile phone is the cause of injury to pedestrians. There doesn’t seem to be any information about whether giving a mother (you don’t mention fathers) a mobile phone and a pram leads to a significant rise in child injuries. So perhaps the mobile phone usage in vehicles and mobile phone usage with prams is not a valid/logical comparison?

If it was made illegal to push a pram while using a mobile phone based on no evidence that this is more dangerous than any other type of mobile use while on the move, then other forms of potential distraction would have to have the same treatment. Imagine policing that?

That said, I vote that mobile phone using pedestrians who stop in the middle of the pavement right in front of
me other pedestrians causing a rear end collision should be fined £100 on the spot for being an arse. If the emergency stop is to take a selfie then a lengthy prison sentence isn’t too harsh IMO.

Presumably no one thinks it's wrong because you need 2 hands to drive a car. It's perfectly possible to push a pram with 1 hand.

And you couldn't stop to take a call on the pavements round here, they aren't wide enough. You could of course ignore the call and phone whoever it is back, but that depends really.

I do think it's a shame that so many parents are constantly on their phones and ignoring their dc. But there doesnt need to be a law about it.

Far far worse is the fact these new mums are going out for a nice walk with their baby - and baby gets zero interaction because mum's head is buried in the phone.

When I took mine out for a walk in the pushchair, we had 'conversations', which in time turned into general chatter about what we could see - dogs, lambs, horses, birds, plants and flowers, farm equipment etc.
On starting school, they could identify at least 10 birds, 10 flowers or plants (including poisonous ones), 3 breeds of sheep, 2 breeds of cow, all brands of tractor - basically what was local, different types of farming equipment, several types of cloud and other random things eg how to tell which way the wind was blowing, to know that water flows downhill , how to tell roughly where north is by looking for the damper side the sun doesn't get to eg moss on trees etc etc etc

It's no wonder today's children start school lacking language skills!

My dad dined out for ages on the tale of when with daughter, aged only just over 2, we were heading out to a country pub for lunch by car. Dad said 'Oh look, a combine harvester!' Daughter barely looked and said drily 'Yes, it's a Claas', which amused my dad immensely (he was a town boy, so hadn't a clue).