By Lester Haines for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Currently, mobile phone records can be probed "only after a
fatal accident and on the instruction of a senior officer".
The government says that in 2005, 13 road deaths, 52 serious and
364 minor accidents were linked to mobile phone use.
A Pontypool sales executive was recently
jailed for two years following an accident which claimed the
life of another driver. The prosecution said Michael Smith had sent
a long text message just minutes before the head-on collision, and
received a reply just as the incident occurred.
The new proposal is part of the Department for Transport's
second review of road safety strategy, released
to coincide with today's implementation of the increased £60 fine
and three points for using a handheld phone. The paper says: "We
will look at ways to make it easier for the police to be able to
follow the process of investigating whether mobile phone use was a
contributory factor in an accident and thus prosecute more
offenders."
Specifically, police sources say "this would entail lowering the
seniority of both the officer who can check the records and the
threshold of the severity of the accident".
Police would be able to check the device's own call records or,
if the phone was destroyed, the operator's records.
The review also moots the possibility of random breath testing
without the need for an officer to "provide a legitimate reason for
a test, such as spotting a motorist driving erratically or
committing a moving traffic offence".
© The Register
2007
