How to keep your driving licence clean
This week the newspapers have been giving plenty of coverage to the fact that next year, it’s likely that the penalty for using a mobile phone while driving will be doubled. Instead of notching up three points on your licence along with a £100 fine, you’ll instead get six points and your wallet will be £200 lighter. Many people have said the move is long overdue, even though surveys suggest that up to a fifth of us regularly use our mobile phone while driving. Around the same time that the government disclosed mobile phone use penalties would be increasing, a lorry driver was jailed for six years, for causing a five-vehicle crash when he checked his text messages as he drove. In 2013, there were at least 22 fatalities on UK roads because of mobile phone use while driving. The problem is that as a new generation of drivers takes to the road, for many, being constantly connected is a must. As those teenagers and twenty-somethings start driving, they’re too comfortable with using their mobiles at the wheel, confident they can multi-task – when they can’t. Now, in a bid to nip things in the bud, the government has said that within the first half of 2017 it will act, by introducing harsher penalties for mobile phone use. The thing is, using a phone while driving is one of several ways that you can notch up points on your licence – so is it about time some of these other offences were subject to tougher penalties?