Mobile phones ban for drivers within next 48 hours
Tuesday March 19 2002
THE use of hand-held mobile phones by drivers will be outlawed within 48 hours, the Irish Independent has learned.
Road safety Minister Bobby Molloy is to sign regulations this week, effective immediately, aimed at curbing talk-and-drive motorists.
Offenders will face prosecution under the Road Traffic Act, large fines and even jail in cases which have led to accident, and in time will have penalty points added to their licences.
The move, expected tomorrow or Thursday, follows Garda reporting of increased incidence of one-handed driving by motorists yapping distractedly on phones.
With four out of five Irish adults owning handsets - 1.2m mobiles were sold here last year - the problem of inattentive drivers has been steadily worsening.
Last year Minister for the Environment Noel Dempsey appointed a committee to study the banning of mobile phone use by drivers after gardai pointed out that it was not a specific offence under Irish law.
Mr Dempsey said at the time that nobody was paying "a blind bit of notice" to calls for drivers to act responsively and pull over before answering calls.
The committee has since reported that there is an "urgent need" to ban the use of mobile phones by drivers, although it is understood this week's regulations may stop short of outlawing hands-free sets which allow drivers to keep both hands on their car's controls while talking.
Mr Dempsey says statistics show that nearly 40pc of all two-vehicle collisions involving death arose from one driver travelling on the wrong side of the road.
Driver error was identified as a contributory factor in 82pc of accidents, he said, and the use of mobile phones while driving is "certainly causing some of those accidents".
Mr Molloy has concluded that the case for a ban on hand-held mobiles while driving is now unanswerable.
According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in Britain, "it is impossible to use a mobile phone when driving without being significantly distracted and increasing the risk of a crash".
A German study, mirrored by research in several US states, found drivers who used hand-held mobiles were up to six times more likely to make errors. Significantly perhaps, even those using hands-free mobiles were three times more likely to make mistakes.
Japanese police figures for 1998 showed a rate of 2,500 traffic accidents a year from driver use of mobile phones.
The question of whether the use of mobile phones by drivers should be an offence under the Road Traffic Act was examined during the drawing up of the four-year Government strategy for road safety, which concludes this year.
It was felt then that it was not a major problem, but the penetration of the Irish market by mobile phones has neared saturation point in just a few years.
A study by Telecoms regulator Etain Doyle estimated that 800,000 new mobile phones will be bought in Ireland this year, down for the first time from around 1.2m sold here last year.
- Senan Molony
