this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
164 points (96.6% liked)

United Kingdom

4109 readers
353 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in !casualuk@feddit.uk or !andfinally@feddit.uk
More serious politics should go in !uk_politics@feddit.uk.

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

“In four years Mike van Erp has filmed 1,400 drivers using their phones, leading to 1,800 penalty points, £110,000 of fines — and him being assaulted by disgruntled motorists. Is he a road safety hero or just a darned nuisance? Nick Rufford joins him on patrol”

I’ve watched a few of his videos. I should be surprised that he catches so many drivers in their phones, but in and around London? Not surprised at all.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mackwinston 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, two way radios are by and large used by the police, ambulance and fire (and certainly when it comes to the police, they like to exempt themselves from legislation they find inconvenient - e.g. for the longest time, motorcycle visor tints were illegal unless you were the police in which case they were just fine!)

Also, alas, politics/legislation is the art of the possible, and perfect is the enemy of the good. Doing nothing because it would be politically impossible to ban all phone use while driving is a worse state of affairs than at least banning handheld phone usage. Of course it bothers me as I'm frequently a vulnerable road user (I own several motorcycles, and do all my local journeys on a pushbike or walk, and I've been hit by drivers whose standard of observation has been piss poor) but at the same time I have to recognise that at least a ban on handheld phone use will reduce my chance of getting hit, even if (at the moment) all phone usage isn't banned, and so while it is not perfect it is better than nothing. And more power to Mikey for dobbing people in.

[–] Blake 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the intent was to exempt emergency services then they would have exempted emergency services.

Two way radios are primarily used by taxi firms.

And your last point is weak, there are infinite possibilities we have between the status quo and nothing at all. Clearly I’m not arguing that there should be a free for all on phone use while driving.

[–] mackwinston 1 points 1 year ago

Very few taxi firms, the practise has largely died out. I can't tell you the last time I got into a taxi with a handheld radio in it. One taxi firm here still has a large dipole on the roof of their building, but AFAIK they no longer use it.