Driving while holding and using a mobile phone is dangerous, stupid, and in the vast majority of places, illegal. However, people still do it, and in the U.K. a particularly keen phone user was caught on camera using not one, but two phones while driving. He wasn’t juggling one phone with the other, but was holding a phone in each hand, leaving a total of no hands available for steering the car. He was also traveling at 60 mph.
It’s hard to believe someone would do something so dangerous; but the news comes from a very reliable source — the local police force that caught the maniac driver. Surrey Police posted a photo on its Twitter account, taken with a police camera through the driver’s side window of the vehicle. The driver has a phone in his left hand and another in his right, and no hands on the wheel.
At first, it’s not possible to tell if the car is moving. In a reply to the tweet one person asks, “Was he on the move when you took that?” The police tweet back, “Oh yes, 60mph.” The car in question isn’t a Tesla, so there’s no autopilot mode in control here, and even then the driver would still need both hands on the wheel. In fact, it’s clear nobody is in control of the vehicle at all. Thankfully, the police stopped the driver, who received a fine of 200 British pounds ($260), and six points on his driving license. In the U.K., you’re banned from driving when you reach 12 points.
Amazingly, it’s not the first time the police have dealt with a “look ma, no hands” situation. Previously, another driver was stopped for sending a text message on a phone in one hand, and having an iPad tablet in the other.
The incident was caught as part of Operation Tramline, a local effort to take on bad driving habits. Interestingly, the police aren’t using a marked car for the job, but a large heavy goods vehicle, which gives the officers a unique viewpoint into vehicles traveling alongside them. It’s how the photograph here was captured. In January alone, 572 vehicles were stopped in the operation along several main motorways around the London area.
We doubt you’re considering doing the same in your car, because you’re aware of the many hands-free options available.
