Phoney war

Dr Zen does not own a mobile phone. Neither does he drive. So the ban on using a mobile when driving won't affect me, except that I'll be less likely to be mown down by someone more interested in telling his wife he's nearly home than looking where he's going.

The BBC carried an interview with one of the first guys to be nicked for breaking this new law. "It was fair enough," he said. "But I have to question, as a human being, whether this should be a law."

That puzzled me. Either the guy feels it is a human right to use your mobile while driving, or he feels that were he a dog he'd agree that it should be illegal.

The tabloids - and in particular the pack of right-wing blacktops that like to pose as "serious" papers, largely because they are staid and nannyish one supposes - were typically hypocritical. It's chaos, they screamed. Drivers were confused because they did not know whether police would fine them (the paltry £30 that the law requires) or allow them grace, as some forces are for a couple of months (because the brilliant minds of my compatriots cannot grasp the idea of a ban straight away).

I feel the Daily Mail could have cleared it all up for them by focusing on the key point: it's illegal to use your mobile when you're driving unless you have a handsfree. It's not legal until you're caught. What next? Murderers face chaos because they're not sure whether they'll go down for life for murder or get off with five or ten for manslaughter?

One of the bugbears of the right-wing tabs is the speed camera. They hate that councils hide them, so that motorists don't get a decent warning so that they can slow down. They ignore that the cameras are there because there are legal speed limits, and the guys who are exceeding them are committing a crime, regardless of where the cameras are and whether they are pink, yellow or grey. The same tabloids screech and wail about the danger of paedophiles' snatching our kids and killing them. Kids are, of course, precious, and it's a bad old world, but on average only one kid a year is kidnapped and murdered by a stranger. The cases are of such a high profile that there seems to be lots of them, but there aren't. We can name the kids involved, no problem.

No one can name those killed by speeding drivers.

In 2002, 3431 people died on Britain's roads. A quarter were pedestrians, a third of those children. A third of accidents involved drivers who were exceeding the speed limit.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:18 pm