Mobile phone use while driving - an issue that seemingly just won't go away.

Great news, but deaths for people who were using mobiles while driving has doubled.  After eight years of the ban, what’s going wrong?  Or could there be a clue in the figures!

Some interesting and largely positive figures have been released by the Department for Transport showing that road deaths in the UK fell in 2010 to 1,850, down by 372 (17 per cent) compared with 2009.  There were also reductions in the number of people injured.

But it wasn’t all good news.  There were 28 HGV occupants killed in 2010 compared with 14 in 2009 and a seven per cent increase in cyclists killed.

Perhaps the most interesting statistic though is the one relating to mobile phone use while driving.  This figure was up 86 per cent in 2010: a remarkable figure as it seems to demonstrate that more people are reverting to using mobiles while driving flouting the law that has been in place since 2003.  More remarkable still are the absolute figures: 15 in 2009; 28 in 2010. 

Now we have all been led to believe that using a mobile phone while driving is a very dangerous thing.  In polite society it has become unacceptable to do it and anyone caught doing so is risking exclusion from the smart set and the local dinner party circle.  But driving deaths while using mobiles, even at the elevated levels of 2010, represent only 1.5% of the total – about the same as in 2003.  What’s going on?  Have we been duped?  Was the ban on using mobiles while driving based on hard evidence or on some political need to be seen to be doing something that would be appreciated by the populace?