Drivers using mobile phones

Today I was almost involved in a very serious accident.

I was driving around a mini roundabout when a van ('CTG windows' if anyone is interested) obviously wasn't going to stop to let me round.  I slammed on my brakes and 'van driver' also stopped - half way across the front of me.  If I was techie enough I would now insert a diagram of what happened.

Suffice to say - he was in the wrong.  So I just glared at him and drove on.

Anyway the reason he hadn't seen me was because he was using his mobile phone.  Actually that might not be the reason he didn't see me.  He might just have been an unobservant idiot?!!  Personally I suspect he was an unobservant idiot who was also on a mobile phone while driving.

I have just been away for a few days.  I have driven almost 1000 miles in the last 6 days.

Last Thursday (the day I left home) I set myself a little project - to count how many drivers I saw using a mobile phone whilst driving.

Unfortunately I forgot about my project - so I can only count the three days that I remembered I was doing a project.  In those 3 days the main roads I travelled on were - A30, M5, M42, M1, A1. and numerous smaller roads.

During the time that I remembered that I was looking for people using mobile phones whilst driving; I spotted 47 drivers.

Considering the fact that driving whilst using a mobile phone is illegal - that's actually quite a lot of people.

However, who polices this rule, who enforces this rule, and actually, does anyone even care about this rule?

There's been a lot of hype in the media about driving whilst on a mobile phone and I've just 'googled' it to see what the fine is.  Apparently it's up to £1000??!!

Sooooooooooo in three days I've spotted 47 people using a mobile phone in a car.  And some of them were even texting (in the outside lane of a motorway??!!)

47 x 1000 = £47,000 -   Remember this is just for 3 days???!!!

So now I'm thinking; this is a huge opportunity for some enterprising individual to cash in on this?

But even if it's not - surely the police forces can employ a couple of 'panda cars' (are they still called Panda cars'??) to patrol up and down the motorways 24/7.  All they'd have to do is take photos of drivers on the phone and then hey presto - £1000 fine's could be issued.  Or would that be infringing on people's 'personal rights'?????

Anyway that's my 'rant' for today.

.....................But I'm still really, really, angry with 'Mr CTG Driver' who almost caused an accident - all because he was on a mobile phone.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..........................