Minister rejects call for helmets to be made compulsory for some cyclists in Netherlands

dafyddp wrote:

If there was a proper political will, I'm sure the mobile issue could be tackled through technology. I'm sure we could develop a protocol that prevents mobiles working above certain speeds unless cradled.

Of course the problem is this would stop passengers legally using phones.

One solution (which seems perfectly reasonable to me) is a system which takes a photo of a car with a phone being used in it, so a person can check if the driver is holding the phone in question. Of course some papers have played to the usual drivers' sense of entitlement when reporting this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11394125/...
...pity the poor "hard-pressed" motorist being "spied" on.

pmanc wrote:

dafyddp wrote:

If there was a proper political will, I'm sure the mobile issue could be tackled through technology. I'm sure we could develop a protocol that prevents mobiles working above certain speeds unless cradled.

Of course the problem is this would stop passengers legally using phones.

One solution (which seems perfectly reasonable to me) is a system which takes a photo of a car with a phone being used in it, so a person can check if the driver is holding the phone in question. Of course some papers have played to the usual drivers' sense of entitlement when reporting this:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11394125/...
...pity the poor "hard-pressed" motorist being "spied" on.

To be honest I don't really see the problem with stopping passengers using phones.

The phone-detector kit is a technological folly, though.

There are two options: either it detects all mobile phone band emissions, in which case it's going to be lit up for 99% of cars with a mobile phone in them at all (because a 2G or newer phone is actively radiating every few seconds anyway, as a protocol requirement) and thus is a very expensive LED matrix sign which might as well not have a detector.

Option 2 is that it only takes a picture of phones which are distinctively "on a call", which doesn't stop you texting at the wheel. It also fails completely with 4G signals as there's no longer a distinction between "on a call" emissions and other emissions. The sign will now light up for (some) people using a phone while they're driving, but not all of them, and it'll light up for passengers as well, and people using handsfree units, and all sorts of other law-abiding behaviours.

From a "being spied upon" perspective, I have an unusual degree of sympathy here: it's a relatively well-accepted principle in English law, current GCHQ stuff notwithstanding, that the public's law-abiding activities shouldn't be documented and stored as a matter of course. This is why (for example) speed cameras only store pictures (or video) once a vehicle is detected speeding, rather than blanket recording to tape and then index-marking speeding vehicles with a timestamp. Heaven knows they would be simpler and more effective that way. Attaching a camera to a mobile phone detector unit would essentially involve either not taking pictures of lots of illegal drivers who were texting at the wheel or otherwise engaged in illegal but non-radiating behaviour (which might fall foul of the principle that the law should not be selectively enforced), or taking pictures of lots of legal drivers whose phones happened to be autonomously emitting at the time. As a side effect, the police would now be faced with a real challenge in terms of algorithmically (or manually) working through thousands of images per camera per day, and identifying 1) who was driving, 2) if they were using a mobile phone, and 3) if their use was illegal. None of these is trivial - lefthand drive vehicles would complicate 1), in-cab radios or handsfree units while in an "unusual" posture would fox 2), and 3) requires a CPS robot which, though evidently being worked on for needlessly prosecuting cyclists who stray out of a lane to avoid obstruction, seems regrettably far away for prosecuting drivers.

Automated detection of phone use is a nice idea, but it's clearly been dreamt up by someone who doesn't actually know much about phone technology and instead learned good PR and marketing skills.

As far as "what's so wrong with passengers not being able to use phones", I might point to all the people on trains and buses who seem glued to them, for all sorts of reasons. And of course any reasonably complex limitation in that sort of system can be overruled, especially in situations where it's one country versus the world. There's nothing to stop me flashing my phone with an un-gimped firmware, and indeed I expect if such a daft law were ever to pass in the UK it would be a simple five minute trip to a phone repair shop and a tenner for anyone to have the same done.