Ref:33/07 February 26, 2007
NO LET UP IN POLICE ENFORCEMENT

From midnight tonight (26 February) drivers who persist in using a hand held phone while driving will face the full force of the law with tougher penalties and the possibility of points on their licence.
Police have been enforcing the law which bans drivers from using hand held phone whilst driving, for which the penalty was a £30 fine. From tonight, Section 26 of the Road Safety Act 2007 provides for offences of using a hand held mobile phone whilst driving and failing to have proper control of a vehicle, both of which are endorsable.

These new offences mean that three penalty points can now be added to the driver’s licence and an increased fine of £60 will be enforced.
Any cases that reach court in addition to the penalty points, could also involve discretionary disqualification and a maximum fine of £1,000 (£2,500 in the case of the driver of a bus/coach or goods vehicle).

Meredydd Hughes, ACPO lead for Roads Policing and Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police said:

“It’s important to remember that 77,000 people have already been fined for driving whilst using their mobile phones, a figure that highlights this offence is policed robustly. The law will continue to be enforced and with the provision of penalties extending to not having proper control of a vehicle drivers need to be aware that not concentrating on the road could not only cause an accident but also earn them points on their licence and a fine on top of that.

Driving whilst using a mobile phone is not acceptable and these penalties will hopefully deter those who think they are above the law.”


Distractions whilst driving can cause death on the roads

Using a mobile phone whilst driving is a distraction and one that could cause a serious error of judgement. Such errors often lead to road traffic crashes and in the worst cases death.
The statement that follows was given to a court by the wife of the victim of a road traffic crash whereby the driver of the other car was using his mobile phone whilst driving at the time of the collision.

“I first learned that my husband had been in a dreadful accident on the M1 two hours after it must have occurred and realised immediately the Police arrived at my house that he was very serious, despite their initial information that he appeared to have gone for a scan at hospital, because I knew if he was conscious he would have got a message to me.

I saw him for the first time, and although his face was unmarked I could see the huge battering his upper body had taken and to me it was instantly obvious that there was no life in him and it was only the machines keeping him alive.
By the time the machines were switched off, some 36 hours after the accident my husbands face and upper body were grotesquely and massively swollen so that he was almost unrecognisable and I know I will have that image imprinted on my brain forever.

His sudden death at the age of 39 has had a profound impact on my family. The most devastating and far reaching effect is the fact my children are now left without their father. He was completely devoted to them, playing with them, reading to them, bathing them, looking after them when they were ill, disciplining them when they were naughty, just being with them whenever he could outside work hours and ringing up to talk to them when he couldn’t be there in person.
He had so much close involvement with them that for the first few weeks after he died my youngest son, who had only had his second birthday 6 days before his father’s death, asked for his daddy inconsolably, over and over again, probably 300 times a day and now graduates to saying with a very serious voice ‘ Daddy died. Car Crash. Broken. Hurt.’ What exactly he understands by this is difficult to know. He is obviously repeating what he has heard, but with time, will no doubt come to realise what this really means. He latches onto any adult male who comes through the door and calls him ‘ daddy’ and both he and his brother act completely over-excitedly whenever there is a man in the house, as they are obviously missing a father figures desperately.

I find it incredibly upsetting to think that he will have no memory of his father when he is older, as I always thought how lucky he and his brother were to have such a wonderful and jolly dad.

I dreaded telling my older son, who was then 6 years old, about his dad’s death and it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. He took the news appallingly, kicking and screaming and then became very quiet and withdrawn for several weeks. Again he was incredibly close to his dad and looking back to how little I remember from the age of 6, I am fearful that he will have very few memories of him too when he is older. He does seem to have understood about death, which surprises me and has never asked for his father back, but now had become increasingly bad tempered and erratic in his behaviour.

On my own I am incredibly lonely, having been married to my husband for almost 13 years and together with him for 4 years before that, a total of 17 years, which is almost half my life. We were not just husband and wife but genuinely best friends so I feel I am grieving twice over, for my lost husband but for my best friend and confidant.

We got engaged at the age of 19 and we had an incredible happy marriage, being one of those couples who could see ourselves still happy in our 70’s. We had big plans for the future, which of course will never happen now, such as seeing his new business expand and hopefully provide us with the means to move to the south coast in the next couple of years before our youngest son started school.

I am now left with the job of being sole parent to my children and this effectively means that they have also lost a part of me, as I now never seem to have time to just sit down and play with them. There is always something needing to be done in a house which is old and difficult and where something always seems to be going wrong.

At present I am just managing to keep it all together, but it is very tiring and time consuming without any sort of regular help, although lots of friends do try and do what they can to help when they visit and I must say that I could not have coped without them.

However as most of these friends were also my husband’s friends I can see how badly they must have been affected too, and I have had to witness grown men crying, see my husband’s best friend decide to give up his hobby, scuba diving, because he doesn’t want to dive with anyone else and I frequently get phone calls and text messages from his friends when they are feeling low and need to talk about him. My husband was an incredibly generous person, giving every bit of help and time he could to any of his friends who were experiencing difficulties and he has left a very big gap in their lives too.

I cannot sleep and my health has suffered. I have a continual cough since November when my husband died and has several colds and a very bad bout of flu for three weeks even missing my eldest son’s birthday party, which luckily went ahead with the help of close friends.

In the near future I will have to either find a job or get some training to enable me to do so. I will have to work full time to support us as the life insurance money I have received will only keep us going for a few years at most. This will mean that I will probably not be able to get the children to or from our school and will entail finding a reliable trustworthy childminder or enrolling them in after school club or nursery. This is not how we wanted to raise our sons. We both agreed that I would stay at home and be there for them when they were at school only getting a part time job once our youngest son started school.

I am not even able to confide completely in anyone about my feelings of loneliness and frustration since the main person I would naturally have turned to in times of trouble would have been my husband. I miss him very much.”

The incident happened on the M1 in November 2001. The driver of the other vehicle was prosecuted primarily for causing death by dangerous driving. He was sentenced to six years imprisonment and disqualified for twelve years.

ENDS

Notes for Editors

• Bids for interviews with Meredydd Hughes are being accepted for 27 February between 7am and 8am and between 1pm to 2pm in Sheffield. Please contact Lou Bloomfield at the ACPO press office to register your interest.
• Footage of police stopping drivers using mobile phone is available for use with this press notice.
• Play out of broadcast footage took place on Wednesday 21 February. Regional stations should contact their main network contact to receive the footage.
• Pictures have been put out by the Press Association on the wires on Wednesday 15 February. Further copies can be obtained from PA.


• The ACPO Press Office can be contacted via 020 7084 8946/47/48 (office hours) or via 07803 903686 (out of office hours).

• The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is an independent, professionally led strategic body. In the public interest and, in equal and active partnership with Government and the Association of Police Authorities, ACPO leads and co-ordinates the direction and development of the police service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In times of national need ACPO, on behalf of all chief officers, coordinates the strategic policing response.

• ACPO’s 341 members are police officers of Assistant Chief Constable rank (Commanders in the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police) and above, and senior police staff managers, in the 44 forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and other forces such as British Transport Police and States of Jersey Police.