Nanny's unrelenting campaign against smoking continues apace.
Today, the new Highway Code is published. This mighty tome, issued by the Department for Transport, contains 29 extra rules and is now 135 pages long — 42 more than the previous version brought out in 1999.
One of the new rules leaves drivers who have a fag behind the wheel open to being prosecuted, for driving without due care and attention.
Under the new Highway Code having a cigarette while driving is a breach of the rules of the road, and is classed as a "distraction".
Therefore, if a driver crashes his/her car while smoking they could be charged with driving without due care and attention. That could mean a fine of up to £2,500, three to nine penalty points or even a ban.
The move is technically regarded as "best practice". However, failing to observe the advice does leave motorists vulnerable to prosecution.
As a pedestrian, I feel much safer now that I know drivers won't be having a fag whilst driving!
Personally, I feel this is long overdue, given that I have seen several examples of people distacted by lighting their cancer sticks and also the idiots that throw them out of the window, only to have it blow back into the car and set their crutch alight.
ReplyDeletePeople messing about changing CDs are in the same league as the smokers in my view and just as potentially dangerous as using a phone whilst driving.
I see another hefty fine is attached. Kerching..
My only fear is that as driving becomes even more stressful, the nicotine adicts may become even more wound up stuck in jams and thus the policy may become counter productive as they get greater withdrawl symptoms and more stressed out.
Ah, but don't you see the trick?
ReplyDeleteA distraction could be anything. Talking to a passenger, briefly checking that the kids are still legally strapped into their seats in the back, as required by law, listening to Gordon Brown avoiding questions on the radio, perhaps even picking ones nose.
How is any of that different to the bans and penalties discussed on NKB so often?
I have to make more avoidance manoeuvres walking through city centres trying to avoid spasmodic child direction changes and presumably myopic adolescents, daydreaming parents with triple width pushchairs, war-cyclists and the cross pathing elderly than I ever have to make on the roads.
Perhaps we should have a Pavement 'Code' that somehow, as with so many of Nanny's advisory outpourings in recent years, suddenly comes to be taken as Law.
Of course those who have already abandoned a life following legal observance (and whose actions are most likely 'influencing' the 'thinking' of the 'thinking' public on these matters) will not care one jot and will carry on as before largely unaffected.
Whilst I have no problem with people's attention being drawn to habits and actions that would be best minimised in certain situations I sometimes wonder how humans ever manage to do anything at all, let alone two things at the same time, without Nanny's ever broadening rule set.
What next? Ban breathing whilst turning right? Stop people driving if they can't see over the top of the steering wheel by at least 6 inches when looking straight ahead? Never open a window when a car is moving?
I await the day when pedestrians will be banned from walking on the cracks in a pavement on health and safety grounds. At least that diktat might have some relevance to personal safety, given the state of so much of our so called infrastructure.
Am I allowed to blink now?
"those who take their eyes off the road to look in their rear-view mirrors"
ReplyDeleteOr to look at their speedo to comply with one of nanny's many new lower - and completely inappropriate for the road - speed limits.