SIR – After the first death caused by driving whilst using a mobile phone, it wasn’t long before the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) identified that the reaction time of a driver using a phone was slowed by 35%.
While TRL figures clearly point to a reaction time akin to that of a driver at twice the drink drive limit – which carries an automatic 12-month driving ban – the penalty for driving whilst using a handheld mobile phone is only a £100 fine and 3 penalty points.
With deaths from it now amounting to many hundreds and no sign of it going away this can’t be good sense! A fatality costs £1.7m.
Texting and driving is a potentially lethal cocktail. In the year ending September 2014, there were 16,640 children killed or seriously injured on our roads.
Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe
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