Distracted driving danger warning

An analysis of the latest figures from the DfT indicates that there may be more than 50,000 instances of people driving while using a hand-held phone every day, along with half a million motorists driving while not wearing a seatbelt. The headline figures collated by the DfT in a project with AECOM suggests three in every thousand drivers observed on England’s roads are using a mobile phone behind the wheel, with the proportion of van drivers breaking the law three times that of car drivers.

The statistics, gathered using images captured by Acusensus roadside technology, also showed 4.8% of vehicle passengers were observed not wearing a seatbelt.

Geoff Collins, from Acusensus, has conducted an in-depth analysis of these figures. He says that, when extrapolated to reflect the millions of journeys made each day, the numbers are “alarming”.

Mr Collins said: “Drivers who don’t wear their seatbelt are likely to continue this behaviour throughout an entire journey. “If seen mid-journey without a suitable restraint, this will probably have been the case all the way. However, hand-held mobile phone use is not usually continuous, so it might happen multiple times during a single journey, but not necessarily at the survey point.”