Phone courses? More evidence that they are not serious about safety!

Greville Burgess. Photo By Lincs Echo.

I have been asked to comment about a new scheme to be run by the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership for a choice of a course or prosecution for phone use while driving. This is our considered response:

'I do see a difference from the 'speeding' courses and the phone courses.

Without a doubt using a phone whilst driving and indeed concentrating on business and other issues whilst driving is exceedingly dangerous,  does cause accidents and is deliberate. Whereas simply driving above an arbitrary and unscientific number on a pole does not cause anything, most who do it are driving perfectly safely, and are often exceeding the limits inadvertently because of the road layout itself.

So where on the one hand the courses are entirely fraudulent at least, with phone use, a course will be able to instruct truthfully and correctly.

Having said that, I ask what is the legal grounds in both cases to ignore a disclosed offence on payment of a course? Either an offence is disclosed or it is not. In my view there was little point in the justified raising of the phone call issue for a separate offence to be created then start wheeling and dealing with it if road safety and saving lives is the true objective.

This is just another example of the Road Safety Industry less interested in what actually kills providing they can sell courses.'  


(Published in full17/8/11 See story here Web version here.)

Regards

Keith Peat.