The Driving Standards Agency has updated The Highway Code for the first time in eight years, and added a list of things that distract motorists while driving …
• Loud music
• Trying to read maps
• Inserting a cassette or CD or tuning a radio
• Arguing with your passengers or other road users
• Eating and drinking
• Smoking
According to the Department of Transport, a fixed penalty notice could be issued, at the discretion of the police, to people who smoke while driving.
True to the principle that no sooner does someone invent a daft new rule than some vindictive little jobsworth will decide to enforce it, fair or foul, Acting Deputy Chief Constable Bernard Lawson of Merseyside Police last night said officers would use existing legislation to prosecute smokers.
Unlike talking on a mobile phone while driving, smoking behind the wheel is not illegal. But motorists can be fined or hauled before the courts for doing anything that causes them to drive without due care and attention, or fail to control their vehicle, and the inclusion of smoking in the Highway Code gives police carte blanche to target smokers at will. Which means, of course, that they will. How could a profession that stops little boys from playing with toy guns and little girls from riding their tricycles or chalking hopscotch squares on the pavement, resist the opportunity to slap fines on those vicious, antisocial smokers?
The impetus for this move seems to have come from a report called "Smoking and non-fatal traffic accidents" issued in 2001 by Médico de Familia, Centro de Salud Delicias Norte, Zaragoza, Spain. Its objective was "to investigate the possible associations between smoking and nonfatal traffic accidents, and to evaluate the possible influence of other factors on traffic accidents."
The study concluded "In statistical terms, smokers have twice as many accidents as non smokers. The absence of significant differences between smokers who do and do not smoke while driving suggests that smoking increases the risk of being involved in traffic accidents regardless of whether drivers refrain from smoking at the wheel." In other words, they found that smokers had more accidents than non-smokers; they did not find any significant differences between smokers who do and do not smoke while driving.
Leaving aside the obvious question of why the hell we're taking advice from Spaniards about road safety, we have to point out that other more respectable studies have produced different results. The most recent international study on smoking while driving is the 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), published in April 2006. It examines types of secondary distractions (smoking while driving is considered a "secondary distraction", along with talking on the phone, speaking to passengers, etc.) compared to crash and near-crash events.
The most frequent secondary tasks contributing to crashes were internal distractions, wireless devices, and passengers. The most frequent types of inattention for near crashes and incidents were wireless devices and passenger-related tasks. Accidents caused by smoking were negligible by comparison.
Another influential study showed that the specific sources of distraction among distracted drivers were, in order of frequency:
• Outside person, object, or event 29.4%
• Adjusting radio/cassette/CD 11.4%
• Other occupant 10.9%
• Unknown distraction 8.6%
• Moving object in vehicle 4.3%
• Other device/object 2.9%
• Adjusting vehicle/climate controls 2.8%
• Eating and/or drinking 1.7%
• Using/dialing cell phone 1.5%
• Smoking related 0.9%
• Other distractions 25.6%
So, talking to your passengers - and even singing to yourself - are much more distracting than smoking. Still, what the hell - everyone knows smoking is bad for you, so no-one's going to complain if we pick on smokers, are they?
Makes you wonder, though, what other things they could add to that list of distractions in the Highway Code. Chewing gum? Scratching your b*ll*cks? Fantasising about that blonde in the typing-pool?
And then there's the number one pastime for drivers on long tedious journeys - I wonder what the official know-all attitude will be to that? How long will it be before a driver is stopped and fined for picking his nose?
And if we can now be fined for smoking in our own cars, how long will it be before they find some excuse to prosecute us for smoking in our homes or gardens?
The GOS says: There's more. In London drivers will be fined £120 for straying into cycle lanes under plans to give local authorities powers to install yet another set of roadside enforcement cameras. Even minor infringements, such as moving briefly into a cycle lane to pass a vehicle turning right, will result in a fixed penalty. Drivers will not know that they have been caught until the penalty notice arrives in the post a few days later.
The powers are initially being proposed for use by authorities in London but would be introduced later across the rest of the country. The cameras would also monitor cycle boxes at traffic lights, known as "advanced stop lines".
Police can already impose a £30 fixed penalty for driving in cycle lanes but only three were issued in London in the year to the end of June. A senior traffic policeman told The Times that it was very low on the list of priorities for officers and that they rarely even bothered to issue a verbal warning. Transport for London is proposing that the offences be decriminalised to allow civilian staff to monitor CCTV cameras and issue £120 penalties by post.
Nick Lester, director of transport at London Councils, said "This will bring enforcement to an area where there isn't any enforcement at the moment. Keeping drivers out of cycle lanes will encourage more people to cycle because there will be a greater perception that it is safe to do so."
And that just about sums it up, doesn't it? The cycle lanes are under-used, because cyclists aren't stupid and know they're dangerous. They're dangerous because they are too narrow and too close to the other traffic. If I was a cyclist I certainly wouldn't want to use them.
But by some warped cloud-cuckoo-land tree-hugging logic Nick Lester thinks he can magically cause thousands of jolly cyclists to appear out of the brickwork and flood London's cycle lanes. And this will give him the opportunity he so craves, to "bring enforcement to an area where there isn't any enforcement at the moment".
Oh, Nick, out of your own mouth will I judge you. You're just a bully, looking for an opportunity to pick on someone.
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Copyright © 2007 The GOS
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