Is the law too soft on drivers using phones?

THE police are soft on ‘mobile madness’ because they’re just as guilty of it, too. When I was a police driver, I drove ‘area cars’, now called ‘immediate response vehicles’, and I had a radio operator who communicated with home base. These days I haven’t seen a single ‘immediate response vehicle’ with more than one person in it — so how do they communicate with base? By mobile or some electronic device. At high speed, such a distraction can be fatal.

IAn RoBeRtSon, address supplied. AN ADVERTISING campaign is much needed to get people to stop using their mobile phone while they are driving. An apt format might be to show horrific footage or photos of deaths or injuries caused by drivers on phones, with the slogan, recontextualising a phrase ubiquitous on mobiles: ‘I was like — oh my God!’

FRAnCIS hARVey, Bristol. IN 2014 mobile phone use accounted for just 24 of the 4,369 recorded causes of the 1,651 fatalities in road accidents at which police were present. Only 12 lives (0.7 per cent) would have been saved if zero phone use eliminated half the 24 fatalities. This suggests the heinousness of this crime might be overplayed compared with, for instance dangerous acts by pedestrians. Those acts contributed to nearly 300 deaths, in 72 of which pedestrian inebriation was recorded as the cause, 80 were pedestrians in a hurry and 61 pedestrians in dark clothing.

PAUL wIthRInGton, northampton. THE rise of the fine to £200 is a farce Compare it with the £500 fine for not having your dog chipped. Phone use must be treated like drink driving.

noRMAn MARRISon, Verwood, Dorset. WHILE waiting ten minutes at a bus stop, I saw five vehicles pass and in each the driver was using a mobile phone. There was no policeman in sight but three traffic wardens walked by, bedecked with notebooks, phones and camera. Why not empower wardens to photograph offending drivers?

JIM PAGe, Bradford-on-Avon, Somerset.