It’s fine by me to raise the cost of motoring offences

My point exactly

The car is easy to take as you don’t actually own it, you are the keeper. This is why the police can immediately take possession of your car when caught driving without a license or insurance, and other parties can remove if left on the road untaxed, and why they can crush [destroy] it without paying compensation.
The seizing of your phone and personal items would be more problematic, as the police need a court order and have to show that your possessions are gained via the proceeds of a criminal act.

I think you miss the point. Losing the phone and contents should be a new part of the “fine” and have nothing to do with how you acquired them. It’s all about making it not worth the point of breaking the law as the current fines are so low as to be pointless. And if nothing else if it reduces the amount of stuff people carry in their cars, maybe that would reduce theft from car crimes as well.

@William, no I see where you are going with this, and certainly the threat of taking just the sim card away, would frighten the socks of most people, let alone the stuff in the car.
But there would need to be a dramatic change in law to allow them to do this.
Scenario: Psycho the banker is driving his new Porcshe down Brompton rd. [of course laws don’t apply to him] boasting about his latest stock market killing to a mate on his mobile, he is spotted, pulled over and his phone, sim, car and contents [including his laptop] are seized.
This chap has the funds to go all the way to the European courts with this, and probably hire Cherie Blair to boot. I feel the legal ramifications would be horrendous, and the costs prohibitive.

We need a happy medium, a harsh punishment for this stupid offence that will act as a deterrent to the majority, but it has to both workable and enforceable.
The harshest penalty we know, the death penalty, does not prevent murder. Fines do not prevent people offending. I would bet that if we hung people for using a mobile whilst driving, we would have to execute a few dozen every year.

@m, I can’t fault you reasoning there.

Do you think it would be that hard to change the law about taking phones and cars then ?

I think the point he was making was that by making fines so expensive, it effectively becomes a rich persons plaything.

For example, hiring a car in many European countries, you can drive through most speed cameras and just receive a fine, no points, yet in Switzerland, the fine is much much larger.

Do you see a pattern here?

@William,
changing the law is the easy part, it’s been able to enforce it and then defend it when our European ‘partners’ object.

It is not only setting a bad example, but it does little to help maintain respect for the police. Like the rest of us, police drivers can and do make little mistakes like stopping in a box junction or forgetting to indicate where lane positioning makes intentions clear, but using a phone in a car is deliberate act.

It seems unlikely that a police car would be stopped by another police car. 🙂

They tried speed cameras on the motorway [M2 I think]
The result, drivers did as they do in town, bunny hopped. The difference is doing it at speeds of between 70 & 100 MPH meant an increase in accidents, so the cameras were removed for safety reasons.
As always it’s not the offender who is injured or killed, it’s the innocent 3rd party.
Average speed cameras may be the answer, the instillation of these types of camera will stop bunny hopping and force drivers to continually monitor their speed. I would like to see an annoying audible alarm [buzzer, bell, donger] which trips if you go over 70MPH, try telling the police you dident realise you were speeding then.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, what car did a report about trailing average speed cameras on the motor way.

Article from Techradar Jan 2010.
Average speed cameras could be installed on all UK motorways if a government-backed group gets its way.

The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) has stated that the cameras, currently only used for roadwork traffic management, would provide significant environmental benefits.

Not only would they apparently keep drivers at a lower speed, thus burning less fuel, they would also replace the current speed traps, which encourage heavy braking and accelerating when used.

Here you are.

https://conversation.which.co.uk/transport-travel/drivers-cars-mobile-phones-safety-law-punishments/

The thing with TV cameras may work as traffic is continually monitored anyway, we have smart camera recognition technology, so any thing appearing to be a phone held to the face would be triggered for scrutiny by human eyes, but this would not pick up those devious idiots who text with the phone in their lap.

I am in favour of the local field generator idea, which would stop all phone calls & texts from mobiles within the car, there would be 1 emergency no, which would be allowed through [just in case] with severe penalties for misuse.

Another idea would be an in car reader which would recognise a phone signal emanating from the car, so if the phone is in use it triggers an alert centre, which cuts into the call with a pre-recorded message telling you it is illegal to use the phone in a moving vehicle [engine on], and advises you to ‘end the is call immediately or be fined £xxx. The bueaty of this is that if the call is not reddened, the fine can be sent directly to the phone as a text message.

Notice this would stop passengers from using mobiles as well [I just think passengers whittering away whilst you are driving is rude & distracting], might cause a problem with black cabs, but they could have hard wired phones in the passenger compartment.