Should members of the public report dangerous drivers…even if they’re celebrities?

Credit: Science Photo Library

In recent days several news outlets have been reporting on the story of David Beckham receiving a 6 month driving ban after having being convicted of committing a mobile phone offence. Beckham was photographed and reported to the police by a member of the public when they witnessed him holding his mobile phone while driving. Reports have been careful to comment that Beckham was in ‘slow moving traffic’ at the time of the offence, and that the resultant ban came about due to him already having 6 points on his licence from a previous driving offence.

While the judge in the case commented that there was ‘no excuse’ for Beckham’s behaviour as the law is clear in terms of hand-held phone use, others have questioned whether it is appropriate for members of the public to photograph and report driving offences such as Beckham’s. One radio station (LBC) had a phone in asking whether people would themselves report a driver using a hand-held phone. While there were some mixed views represented, many claimed that they would not photograph and report fellow road users for holding a phone. Those who said they had or would report such an offence were in the minority and were accused, by the presenter, of gaining pleasure in reporting such minor offences.

This discussion raises several important points about phone-use by drivers. While recent surveys of driver behaviour have suggested that many consider phone use to be dangerous, and report that they would not use their phone behind the wheel, it seems that many would still not consider reporting a driver who did. This suggests that although there may be a relatively widespread view that phone use is unsafe, in practice people don’t take it seriously enough to consider reporting the offence. For some this seemed to be down to lack of knowledge of the details of individual instances. Comments such as ‘what if he was just checking the time on his phone?’ or ‘what if he was just putting it back into the holder on the dash?’, point to the view that some people consider that there are degrees of danger associated with phone use while driving. This leads to the question of what ‘phone use’ actually means. When the original law came in, back in 2003, mobile phones were entirely different from the smartphones we have today. You could make calls and send text messages and that was about it. Today our phones have vast uses including the ability to search the Internet, live stream video, and update social media as well as making calls and sending text messages.

Nevertheless, the law states that a driver must not hold or touch their phone. There may be a distinction though between what the law says, and what is considered generally to be socially acceptable. This might explain why some people would report a distracted driver while others wouldn’t. Most people would argue that texting while driving represents a significant danger (and indeed research unequivocally supports this stance), but what about checking a Facebook status update while stuck in traffic, or cancelling an incoming call while driving through town? The fact that it has been reported that Beckham was in slow moving traffic at the time of the offence points to the suggestion that many people consider certain types of phone use to be less dangerous dependent on driving conditions. This argument may well have some merit if the only problem with phone use by drivers is the physical act of holding the phone. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. This is where the current law on mobile phone use behind the wheel lets us all down.

The problem is that we’re all so focused on the letter of the law in terms of phone use. We know it’s illegal to hold a phone, and we understand that looking away from the road is dangerous. We all have the message drummed into us that safe driving equates to having both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. Years of research has shown that the act of physically holding a phone isn’t the major factor of distraction in drivers. The distraction is cognitive. Our brains can only process so much information at once, and phone use introduces competition for limited attentional resources in the brain. As with any competition, one side usually wins. In the context of dual tasking while driving, if the phone task wins the attentional resources, driving performance quickly deteriorates. This means, failure to react to hazards, longer reaction times for unexpected events, much longer stopping distances, and even failing to see things which appear right in front of you.

So, while we’re all focused on the issue of holding a phone, we’re actually ignoring the fact that hands-free phone use offers no safety benefit to drivers over hand-held use. This has been demonstrated by numerous researchers across the world over the last 30 years. Such research has shown that any type of phone use makes a driver four times more likely to crash; it can lead to them look at a hazard yet fail to see it, as their attention is elsewhere; it can affect where they look while driving, to the extent that they may fail entirely to look at some parts of the driving scene. These effects last for around 5 minutes after a driver has stopped using the phone. This is why texting at traffic lights is a problem, and why it really doesn’t matter whether Beckham was in slow moving traffic or not.

The current phone law lets us down because it focuses the danger on handheld devices and fails to acknowledge the real cognitive danger. It’s unsurprising then that people are focused on the issue of physically holding a phone as that’s what the law directs them to.  By failing to legislate against hands-free phone use, the law fails to highlight the real danger: cognitive distraction. So should the law treat hands-free phone users the same as people holding a phone to their ear? Yes. While only handheld use is currently illegal, phone using drivers are taking greater risks to their own and others’ safety than they are perhaps aware of. This means that law-abiding citizens, who are using their phones hands-free are actually in the same position in terms of safety as those breaking the law. Until policy acknowledges research we will remain in this uncomfortable position. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t enforce current law and attempt to educate drivers on the dangers of phone use. There are some great initiatives run by different police forces across the UK which aim to enforce the law and enable citizens to support the police. Operation Snap, in Wales, allows members of the public to upload footage of dangerous and distracted driving. Operation Top Deck, launched by West Midlands police, uses buses to enable photographing of driving offences. If we want to make our roads safer and reduce the number of needless deaths and serious injuries, supporting such initiatives is a great first step.

Gemma Briggs, The Open University