Death, jail and ban . . how mobiles and cars don't mix

I CHECK my mirrors, indicate and just as I start to move off in my car, I stretch over and rummage in my bag to retrieve the mobile phone that's started ringing. After all, I'm only doing about 30mph.

By the time I look back through the windscreen, I am facing on-coming traffic and panic. I swerve back into the left-hand lane to avoid a head-on collision with a lorry - only to plough into a child who has emerged from behind an ice cream van.

I am horrified and cannot believe how quickly I have lost control but thankfully no-one has been hurt as I am in the safe confines of an Edinburgh-based driving school where my responses are being tested on a simulator.

Which is just as well because in real life, my decision to answer that call could have cost that child his life - and me my freedom, as a prison sentence would undoubtedly have been my thoroughly-deserved punishment.

Of course, as it's just a simulator I'm answering the phone because I'm keen to see just what a difference it would make to my driving. But there are plenty of people who are happy to take the risks for real.

A recent three-week survey carried out during a police campaign in Edinburgh found that professional motorists were the worst offenders with one in every 22 van or lorry drivers spotted using their phone while behind the wheel. This compares to one in 75 car drivers.

Figures released last year revealed 274 drivers in the Lothian and Borders had been taken to court since the ban on using hand-held mobiles while driving came into force just over three years ago.

Which is why road safety campaigners are welcoming the new harsher penalties for mobile phone use, brought in this week, and are so keen to hammer home the message that phoning and driving is dangerous.

"The people who do this are just selfish, selfish people," says Chief Inspector Kenny Buchanan, head of road policing at Lothian and Borders Police.

"No-one is so important they have to take a phone call and risk someone's life.

"For once, people need to think of others and, if they have to take a call, they should find a safe place to stop, switch the engine off and then pick up the phone."

He adds: "All the research shows that you are four times more likely to have an accident while using a mobile phone and as likely to have a collision as someone who is over the drink-drive limit.

"Certainly this week, and for the foreseeable future, officers will be using a combination of marked and unmarked vehicles and motorcycles to look out for those using their phones while driving."

Up until now, the 100 drivers caught flouting the law in the Lothians each week have only been punishable by a £30 on-the-spot fine.

That financial penalty has now doubled and drivers will also be punished with three penalty points on their licence - a move which could see them banned from driving if they fail to learn their lesson.

Back to the simulator - usually used by the driving school to put novice drivers through their paces to boost their confidence before they take to the open road - I have no such worries.

Undeterred by my accident, the pretend Vauxhall Corsa I am driving allows me to make my getaway from the accident scene and orders me to drive ahead, obeying the 30mph speed limit.

Suddenly my phone rings again and I make a grab for it. Unfortunately, while I answer, the traffic lights ahead turn to red and, although I slam on the breaks, my car goes sailing into the junction and smacks into a vehicle that has apparently come from nowhere.

Despite the growing carnage, I persevere and, with the phone still jammed between my right shoulder and chin, I awkwardly attempt to turn left. As my mobile begins to slip from my ear, I end up balancing the steering wheel with my right knee so I can change down to second gear. I lose control of the car and it bumps up on to the pavement and crunches into a wall.

After I have removed the hands from my face, I see my instructor Seb Jowett shaking his head disapprovingly.

"As soon as you went for that phone, you looked down so you were no longer looking at the road and were all over the joint," he tells me.

"You were not concentrating and not in full control of the car. You stopped checking the mirrors and the road around you and you were getting flustered. Imagine what would have happened if you had been on the road."

Seb is amazed that I only crashed three times while driving with my phone, though over a ten-minute period this does seem a fairly accident-prone record.

Also, because I was not paying attention to my speed, I broke the limit 14 times.

I drove dangerously close to other cars on ten occasions and I was in the wrong position on the road a further 14 times. It's just as well I wasn't doing my driving test.

Seb is a training adviser with the British School of Motoring in Edinburgh and, from his Morrison Street base, he sees people flouting the law all the time.

"Morrison Street is a very busy road but you see people all the time using their phones," he says.

"And it's not just professional drivers in vans or taxis but people with kids in the back of their car who are doing it.

"They don't seem to realise they are not in control of the car and they are a danger to themselves and to everyone else."

With that, I step outside into the real world and a real car - with my mobile phone firmly turned off.