Dial and drive yet get off the hook

REARVIEW:WHAT WOULD you do if, while tootling merrily along the road in your car, you glanced in the rearview mirror to see the goon behind you quaffing from a bottle of booze as he drove?

Hopefully, you’d pull over and alert the Garda to the presence of this dangerous lunatic.

Now picture your reaction if, instead of drinking, he was jabbering away on a handheld phone. Would you see him as an immediate risk to public safety who should be immediately thrown into a cell?

Of course you wouldn’t. You’d shrug it off and keep going.

And this despite study after study telling us that using a phone while driving hugely increases the chances of being involved in a crash and could be as lethal as driving while drunk.

If we were to believe some of the research, a trucker texting while driving is posing so great a danger to others that he might as well be doing shots of tequila and lines of Peruvian marching powder off the dashboard.

Under current legislation, drivers caught using a handheld phone while driving can expect to receive two penalty points and a €60 fine. But if they are caught driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, they face a lengthy ban and possibly even jail.

This makes no sense. Where is the consistency? Why are the penalties so different if the potential for carnage is the same?

The answer is that tougher penalties get introduced only if politicians come under pressure from the public. At present, there is no such national outcry with regard to phone use by motorists.

Why? That’s simple. Because turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.