We’re a talkative lot here in London and we basically have no manners, so we’ll jabber away on our mobile phones in pretty much any situation. Even, apparently, if it’s putting us and others in danger.
An in-depth study of over 14,000 London drivers by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has found a worrying increase in the number of London motorists making and taking calls using their handsets at the wheel between 2008 and 2009.
Harsher penalties for using a phone at the wheel of a vehicle were brought in back in 2007 – including large fines and points on your license. Apparently this made London drivers sit up and take notice, as that year saw the lowest rates of mobile phone handset use while driving.
It seems the dangers have been forgotten however and London motorists have returned to their old chatty ways.
It’s not illegal to use a hands-free kit or Bluetooth headset so we have to wonder why people are needlessly risking prosecution and endangering people on the roads, when you can pick these gizmos up for very little money.
Cabbies are the best behaved it seems, with 14% using hands-free kits – probably because they also risk losing their jobs if caught.
Here at Recombu towers, you’d never catch us at the wheel using a handset. We’d be using the rather classy-looking Jabra Cruiser Bluetooth speakerphone or the Jawbone Prime Bluetooth headset instead, if only to disguise the fact that we’re actually singing our little hearts out.
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