Mobile phone use while driving

[katec1978]

I am working with Seth Dixon's mum Alice who says "Seth, my 7 year old son (nearly 8), died from his injuries after being hit by a car in December 2014 and he may have lived if the driver had not been chatting on the phone. We do know she would have been distracted, thus her reaction time slowed and the coroner found this contributed to his death. It is important to acknowledge that the driver could have been any one of many of us who have been told in the past hands free is okay, she was not speeding. It was a tragic accident.
The latest research shows clearly that using phones hands free whilst driving is as unacceptable as drink driving as the impact on the driver is the SAME. The evidence of this is so strong that as the media has reported the government is planning to introduce harsher penalties based on this research and so I have also contributed in interviews. Help me to make this clearer in law to ban all mobile phone calls. It is clear that the risk is unacceptable, that lives are too precious. Seth was too precious, saving life needs to be put before a phone call. Below is my petition which can also be shared by e-mail & online elsewhere, PLEASE sign & keep sharing, and specially pass on to any groups who will share, so it gets heard." #SignForSeth

Petition link :- petition.parliament.uk/petitions/132875

I have got less than 2 months to get 100,000 signatures for debate in parliament or petition will expire and so will hope for changing minds to save lives. If you can read the detail of the petition, please do. Unfortunately the radio link that was attached to petition, doesn't work anymore, but here is a link from an interview on BBC Cambridgeshire if you listen from about an hour 6 minutes in.
bbc.in/2cxAn8T
Link to research :-
Comparison with driving drunk (real test drive):
www.researchgate.net/…/259258482_How_Dangerous_is_D…
Review of multiple studies (mostly of crash risk): www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15389580600651103
Most recent study (simulation): www.sciencedirect.com/…/ar…/pii/S1369847816000085Okay

Thank you for taking the time to read this - please sign and share if you can.

100% agree and have signed. I think the penalty for using mobiles whist driving should be more stringent, including long-time driving bans and removal and crushing of the vehicle. It's the only way people will learn.

I wish you the very best of luck with the petition.

Signed X good luck X

Signed

And BUMP

Signed. I'm bloody sick of seeing people driving while on their phones or texting, and I agree about how distracting it is. I never make calls when driving. I don't even scroll through to find music unless we're at crawling speed and I feel that it's safe!

Have clicked the link, see so many drivers doing this. Quite honestly we should go back to the time before mobiles when we didn't die if we didn't talk to that person right then right now.

I agree that mobile phones use needs to be restricted heavily when driving. Could I ask out if interest why you decided to make the petition specific to making and receiving calls?
In the recent case of the lorry driver on the A34, he was looking for music to play.
Many people are checking Facebook.

I'm not criticising at all and I think it's a problem area in terms of what constitutes mobile phone use, so just interested in why you decided to focus on calls.