Hand-held cellphone ban in cars proposed

The Dominion Post reports that later today the Government will announce a proposed law change to ban hand-held cellphone use in cars.

My views on this are well known. We should have laws which focus on all distractions to drivers, not pick and choose particular distractions on the basis of media headlines. A cellphone use ban should be accompanied by banning food, drink, smoking, tuning the radio and passengers who talk.

Also there has been research showing that hands free cellphone use is just as distracting as hand held use.

I would be very interested to review any studies from countries which have banned hand held cellphone use, and whether or not this has led to any reduction in crashes due to distractions, and also how many people have been fined for breaking the new law. My suspicion is it affects the crash statistics very little, but increases ticketing and revenue.

There are circumstances where it is perfectly safe to talk on a cellphone while driving, and times when it is not safe. Just as there are times when it is safe to drive at 120 km/hr on an open road and times when it is not safe to go more than 70 km/hr. It is called driving to the conditions.