A new campaign in the UK is vowing to get tough on drivers who deliberately break the rules around using their phones on the road.
Think! road safety have released a new video campaign involving the Carvin family, who 11 years ago lost mum Zoe, 42, in a horrific road crash caused by a lorry driver using his phone.
Despite using a mobile phone while driving being outlawed in the country in 2003, many motorists break the rules in order to answer texts, phone calls, or even change the music on their device, putting other people on the road at risk.
As a result of this, the rules in the UK are changing. As of March this year, the penalties for using your phone while driving has increased to six points on your licence and an immediate $400 fine.
As Zoe’s widow Paul says: “People use the word accident, it wasn’t an accident…It was caused by somebody doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing.”
Her daughter Emily, who says the impact of her mother’s death affects her every day, adds that she “feels sorry” for the driver who killed her mum, as he “has to live with the fact he took a life.”
Heartbreakingly, widow Paul admits that he often still talks to his wife, “to tell her about things that have happened, things that I’ve done, things that the children have done.”
“Everything died on that day because that man decided to pick up his phone,” says Emily.
While son Ben said: “Nothing is so important that it cannot wait.”
Zoe was killed as she sat at traffic lights in Denwick, Northumberland, in 2006.
Here in New Zealand, using your phone at the wheel can get you an $80 fine and 20 demerit points, though in 2014, Stuff reported that half of Kiwis ignored the rule – and often texted or answered phone calls while on the road.
39% of Kiwis surveyed also said that they wanted penalties for road abusers to be harsher.
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