Difficult to argue

Brunstrom draws his critics but can any logical person really argue with this blog ?

"Driving on the phone.

It’s Tuesday. I’ve just caught the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 - not something I normally do at lunchtime, but I was driving back from a visit (to the Toyota factory on Deeside; I’m going back - we’ve got things to learn from them) and switched the radio on.

By chance, today is the day the government have increased the penalty for using a hand held phone while driving. It’s now £60 and three points on your licence, as it always should have been. Credit where it’s due - three cheers for the government. This will save lives.

But I was appalled by many of the people phoning in to the show. Literally shocking. Caller after caller falling into the category of dangerous (male) idiot who believes that
a) they are the world’s best driver and
b) the law doesn’t apply to them, because they are the world’s best driver.

It is literally frightening to think about how many of these morons there are out there, sharing the roads with you and me. People who really have deluded themselves into thinking that they are invulnerable, incapable of error and therefore safe. People who can’t understand statistics, or are in denial of them. People who just refuse to accept the law, and the reason for it. As I have said before, this amounts to anti-social behaviour - and it’s serious, because the consequence is sometimes death (we still kill about 3000 [three thousand] people on our roads every year in the UK)

Driving a vehicle while using a hand held phone is illegal. It has been so for some time now. It’s literally criminal - and now the punishment better fits the crime.

In 2006 North Wales Police gave fixed penalty tickets to 3051 people caught using mobile phones while driving. So far this year we’ve caught 374 more. Please be warned - we will deal robustly with this offence, and you will lose your licence if you persist.

But I’d much rather that you stop doing it in the first place - it’s the responsible way to behave, and more of us will live to die of old age as a result".

Let us hope we can take note.