Being able to communicate while in your car is very useful, especially if you’re in it a lot and could be potentially life-saving (I wonder if accident response times are better with phones nowadays) As I said with a hands free facility kit it is no different to talking to someone in the car with you. On the car I have it is all controlled with buttons on the steering wheel.

What?

I commute 43 miles every day each way on some of the busiest roads in England. Dealing with speeding cars, traffic jams, tail-gating, idiot van drivers, crap weather, road works etc. commands much more attention. There are many, many more likely accident scenarios every single day than a distraction caused by a rare phone call.
A real contribution to road safety would be better road networks and driver education, not a petty unenforceable banning of hands-free mobile phone use.

So would you ban all the other distractions in cars? Sat-navs, in-car entertainment, talking to passengers, misbehaving children or is it just a mobile phone thing?

I would say it depends on the hands free equipment. If it is built in to the car then using it is no different to using any other equipment in the car. If it is the act of being in a phone conversation that is found to be distracting then we will have to ban smoking, radios, music players, sat navs and passengers. The mobile phone is a much easier target though.

How many more innocent lives are going to be lost before someone says enough is enough– but hey your need to use the phone on the move is much more important.

Maybe you could let me know how many innocent lives have been lost by legal mobile phone use as opposed to driving too fast, too close etc. RoSPA doesn’t distinguish between hand-held and hands free as they think both are equally as bad.
Nobody is suggesting that using a phone doesn’t distract, what I’m saying is that there are plenty of other equally if not more distracting activities while driving – all equally legal. Are those to be banned too? Interestingly RoSPA doesn’t seem to mention any of those with a view to outlawing them. Would this include the use of smart-phone as a sat-nav or as a media player?

I use a hands-free to pass on brief messages to let my family know I’ve been delayed, I’m held up in yet another traffic jam or asking to find out information about the weather; in total maybe a couple of times a week. Something that a mobile phone is ideally suited for. I don’t use my phone for idle chatting while driving and unless it is a number I recognize, I generally don’t answer calls. Waiting on the next service station is impossible (there aren’t any on my commute) as is pulling over (of my 43 mile commute, only 3 miles at each end are not on a motorway). As usual any ban would end up hurting those that use a phone sensibly – those that don’t will carry on using them anyway.

I wonder if it’s a flash player problem that is affecting me. Every time I use the forum on my phone (Firefox for Android 4.4.2) it crashes the browser. I know Flash support for Android is pretty much non-existent so I wodnder if it’s connected. Oddly enough on the tablet (Galaxy Tab 10.1) it’s fine. They have different Android versions though.

Snafu is right. Why was there no warning with this recording? The BBC must have such a system to stop the unwary DJ playing something like the Sex Pistols “Bodies” to the wrong audience…unlikely I agree but the consequences could be tragic….

The problem the BBC have is that if they had done nothing, the outrage bus would be heading out of the garage as we speak.. “BBC plays record with offensive language and does nothing about it” sort of thing. The media (and I’m thinking Daily Mail/Express here) have a history here.

In other news, I see that Red Ed is busy rushing out feelgood policies, without thinking about their implementation.

Sure, getting everyone who wants one, an appointment with their GP within 48 hours is a great idea, and might well work 75% of the time. However, in the middle of a flu epidemic, perhaps not.

Hopefully, he is grasping at straws.

And this has what do to with UKIP exactly?

Isn’t anyone bothered that in the UK in 2014 we have the police involved in attempting to stifle political debate?