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Yesterday's Blog Post:
Yup, boring old road safety again. I wish there was some different cycling related content at the front of my mind – but if there is it’s overwhelmed by crap like this:
Riding to work yesterday I witnessed a driver using a mobile phone. It’s illegal in the UK. Tests have conclusively demonstrated that driving whilst using a phone diminishes a driver’s abilities. It has the precisely the same effect as the consumption of alcohol and we all accept that drink driving is a Bad Thing. We fought long and hard in this country to get drivers/society to accept that driving whilst under the influence of alcohol was a Bad Thing. It was difficult. For many years there remained a hardcore of deniers: ‘I drive better when I’ve had a drink’ idiots.
Well now we find ourselves in a similar situation – except this time it’s mobile phone use.
I fully appreciate that staff training costs companies a great deal of time and money, but you’d think that a company as large and successful as Travis Perkins would have no trouble finding the dosh to explain to its drivers the rules of the fricking road. Apparently not.
It winds me up when I see ordinary drivers of automotive carriages flauting the law (I recently witnessed the spectacle of a woman texting whilst steering with her knees. Not an unusual event you’d think, except she was wearing a police uniform) but when professional drivers do it I’m utterly gobsmacked.
What mobile phone drivers don’t realise is that they become so bad at driving that it’s possible to spot them from a distance. In fact it’s so easy when you know what to look out for that the kids can do it. I clocked his erratic driving before I saw the phone in his hand. And I wish I’d had a speed radar in my hand because I’ll wager a penny to a pound that he was doing close to 40mph as he approached a 20mph school zone too.
We’re not talking about a car or a van here by the way – he was driving a massive flat-bed truck. An HGV (heavy goods vehicle). I called Travis Perkins, they promised to look in to it and get back to me yesterday. They didn’t.
Quelle surprise.
All drivers have a duty of care to other road users. Particularly professional drivers of enormous vehicles. Driving with a mobile phone pressed to your ear is a massive ‘**** you’ to every other road user within crashing distance. It says ‘The law doesn’t apply to me and I don’t give a damn about your safety’.
‘**** you’ it says.
‘**** you’ Travis Perkins.
Yup, boring old road safety again. I wish there was some different cycling related content at the front of my mind – but if there is it’s overwhelmed by crap like this:
Riding to work yesterday I witnessed a driver using a mobile phone. It’s illegal in the UK. Tests have conclusively demonstrated that driving whilst using a phone diminishes a driver’s abilities. It has the precisely the same effect as the consumption of alcohol and we all accept that drink driving is a Bad Thing. We fought long and hard in this country to get drivers/society to accept that driving whilst under the influence of alcohol was a Bad Thing. It was difficult. For many years there remained a hardcore of deniers: ‘I drive better when I’ve had a drink’ idiots.
Well now we find ourselves in a similar situation – except this time it’s mobile phone use.
I fully appreciate that staff training costs companies a great deal of time and money, but you’d think that a company as large and successful as Travis Perkins would have no trouble finding the dosh to explain to its drivers the rules of the fricking road. Apparently not.
It winds me up when I see ordinary drivers of automotive carriages flauting the law (I recently witnessed the spectacle of a woman texting whilst steering with her knees. Not an unusual event you’d think, except she was wearing a police uniform) but when professional drivers do it I’m utterly gobsmacked.
What mobile phone drivers don’t realise is that they become so bad at driving that it’s possible to spot them from a distance. In fact it’s so easy when you know what to look out for that the kids can do it. I clocked his erratic driving before I saw the phone in his hand. And I wish I’d had a speed radar in my hand because I’ll wager a penny to a pound that he was doing close to 40mph as he approached a 20mph school zone too.
We’re not talking about a car or a van here by the way – he was driving a massive flat-bed truck. An HGV (heavy goods vehicle). I called Travis Perkins, they promised to look in to it and get back to me yesterday. They didn’t.
Quelle surprise.
All drivers have a duty of care to other road users. Particularly professional drivers of enormous vehicles. Driving with a mobile phone pressed to your ear is a massive ‘**** you’ to every other road user within crashing distance. It says ‘The law doesn’t apply to me and I don’t give a damn about your safety’.
‘**** you’ it says.
‘**** you’ Travis Perkins.
