4 ms·
I'm from the UK. I'm very split on this. On one hand I hate that people use their mobiles while driving, not because I particularly care if the driver wants to
by kypro 3y ago
I'm from the UK. I'm very split on this.
On one hand I hate that people use their mobiles while driving, not because I particularly care if the driver wants to take that risk with their own life, but because they risk the lives of their passengers and other road users.
That said, the UK does not have a good track record when to comes to applying this technology reasonably in my opinion. We have similar cameras which catch people driving in bus lanes or in low emission areas in the UK, and while I often agree in principle with bus lanes and low emission areas, I feel like they're enforced unfairly and with a complete lack of context.
For example my city recently introduced a low emission area, the rules for which are not very clear and for some reason these low emission areas seem to primarily include high trafficked sparsely populated areas. A few weeks ago I had a family member drive down to visit me and they very briefly drove in one of these areas by accident and were hit with a £120 fine.
Point is there is not adequate warning for road users and the low emission areas haven't even been implemented in areas that are reasonable – such as those that are highly populated or have high foot traffic. I'd actually argue the low emission zone in my city is just an anti-car, revenue generating move, enforced via automatic license plate recognition cameras which have no appreciation for context.
Similarly here, I wonder how these camera might be used. Admittedly there are times I will remove my seat belt in the car such as to remove a jacket at stop lights, and although I never use my phone while driving I will sometimes pick it up and check notifications on the lock screen when it's safe to glance at it such as in slow moving traffic or at stop lights. I don't think doing this is any more dangerous than say fiddling with a car radio (which is perfectly legal), and it's very different from someone texting or holding their phone to their head while driving, but these cameras and the way they're enforced typically have no appreciation for this.
So I dunno... I guess if they're preventing cases such as the one shown in the article then great, but if they're going to be fining people £120 for glancing at their notifications at stop lights I'd rather they not exist. It's just going to effectively be another tax on working people who need to drive to / for work.