Video: Phones Are Not For Cars

Using your phone while driving, handsfree or not, is more dangerous than driving high.

It’s official. Using your phone while driving, even hands free, is far more dangerous than driving high or over the drink-drive limit. A new study by a private think tank in England (Transport Research Laboratory) has shown that talking while driving with a handheld is more than twice as dangerous as being out of your mind on weed.? Driver reactions are 46% slower on handheld, 37% slower while texting and 27% slower on hands-free than compared to normal. To put that into context, driving while just over the limit slows reactions by a mere 10%.

In the UK, activists are campaigning for an instant driving ban for people who use their devices while driving after a 13 year old schoolgirl was dragged under a lorry for 100 metres without the driver even noticing because he was texting. It may take such drastic measures here, too, to get people to sit up and pay attention – anecdotally, it doesn’t seem like people are taking the €1,000 penalty seriously enough. This morning we passed two people in flagrante in the course of a barely 5 minute commute.

Let’s make this a crusade @RSAIreland

Watch how Volkswagen illustrate it very simply and effectively here: