Police reach new heights to catch drivers using phones
COPS staking out motorists from the top deck of a bus prosecuted a woman for driving without due care and attention - after she was caught eating a bowl of cereal behind the wheel.
Police have reached new heights to catch law-breaking motorists in their latest road safety scheme, which sees them film offenders from buses.
Operation Top Deck has been launched by the West Midlands Police Road Harm Reduction Team and sees plain clothes officers equipped with video cameras peering down at passing motorists on the lookout for distracted drivers.
From their vantage point, they can look down into cars and see motorists on their mobile phones or committing other traffic offences, and even eating their breakfast.
On the first day of the initiative, a woman was prosecuted for driving without due care and attention after officers found her eating from a bowl of cereal in her lap at the wheel.
Elsewhere a man was caught using his phone while en route to a speed awareness course.
And a disqualified driver was also pulled over and arrested thanks to eagle-eyed cops riding the top deck.
Information is radioed to police bikers who divert offenders to a designated site where they are given an educational input, including a hardhitting, virtual reality video highlighting the potentially devastating consequences of using a phone while driving. West Midlands Police’s Road Harm Reduction Team launched Op Top Deck on last Monday.
An astonishing 45 motorists using phones behind the wheel were caught in just a few hours.
Thirteen of them - ones who were using devices in stationary traffic were given an on-the-spot education input on the dangers.
Their details were taken and they face prosecution should they be caught a second time.
The rest face the prospect of a £200 fine and six licence points adding to their licence.
Between April 2017 and March 2018, a total of 990 people were killed or seriously injured on roads in the West Midlands - during the same period 1,251 drivers were prosecuted for using phones at the wheel.
It’s the first operation of its kind in the UK and follows other initiatives introduced by the unit - including Operation Close Pass, targeting motorists who endanger cyclists which have been embraced by police forces across the country.
Bus passengers can also support Op Top Deck - a joint project with National Express and Transport for West Midlands - by supplying their own video evidence of offending drivers via a dedicated self-reporting site on the West Midlands Police website.
PC Mark Hodson said: “Using mobile phones while driving is proven to be as dangerous as drink driving; it can devastate lives and people need to understand this isn’t acceptable. “We want to create a credible, constant threat of prosecution to induce wholesale driver behavioural change and make our roads safer.
“The buses are ‘borrowed’ from National Express and will look like any other bus in service - but they will be driven by Safer Travel officers who are qualified bus drivers and the passengers will be police officers or PSCO’s equipped with video cameras.
“Buses give us a perfect vantage point into cars and also the cabs of lorries and trucks.
“Offenders will be given a roadside educational input on the dangers of distracted driving and also face the prospect of a hefty fine plus six points on their licence.
“We will look at particular circumstances but there will also be some drivers, ones who’ve been particularly reckless, who we will charge and take to court.”
Op Top Deck has been launched to coincide with National Mobile Phone Week (Sept 17-21) which sees traffic cops in police forces across the country targeting dodgy drivers.
PC Hodson, said: “Our plan is to ‘up-skill’ neighbourhood PCs so that whenever they’re on a bus they can use their mobiles to film offenders and secure prosecutions.
“Everyone needs to pull together to show that using phones while driving must stop...we need to make it socially unacceptable.”
West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson, who brought in the original ban on driving while on a mobile phone back in 2003 as a Transport Minister, added: “The reason the ban was introduced was to keep the public safe.
“Motorists who use their mobile phone while driving are four times more likely to crash. This campaign is about saving lives.”