Fatality boosts calls for mobile phone ban
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. by Guy Sheppard Hauliers are facing renewed calls to ban the use of mobile phones at the wheel after a truck driver hit and killed a man while sending a text message to his girlfriend.
Paul Browning, who worked for Linde Gas, was jailed for five years by a judge who said Browning had shown "blatant and cold-blooded disregard for the law".
The West Bromwich-based company has declined to comment about the accident on the A13 in Essex last June but the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) says it is the fifth clear-cut case since 1995 in which mobile phones have been implicated in fatal accidents involving trucks.
Roger Bibbings, RoSPA's occupational safety advisor, says drivers should be banned from using all types of phone because they cause too much distraction: "Drivers need to make intelligent use of their messaging facilities to indicate that they are driving and that they will download their messages within a defined time period."
Browning, from Kenley in Surrey, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving but denied sending a text message at the time of the crash. Instead he claimed that he was distracted by paper flying round his cab when he hit the victim, Paul Hammond, who was standing in a lay-by talking to his mother.
Judge Daniel Worsley rejected this explanation, and added that the five-year sentence was necessary to send a "stern deterrent to drivers".
The trial ended shortly after an unsuccessful bid by Tory MP James Gray to ban the use of hand-held phones at the wheel; his private member's bill ran out of parliamentary time. Gray argues that RoSPA's call to ban the use of all types of phone is unrealistic. "I think that is seeking perhaps a tooperfect world." he says.