New Paper: ‘Why aren’t you using Bluetooth?!’: Officer understanding of the dangers of handheld and handsfree mobile phone-use by drivers

A new paper on the policing of mobile phone use by drivers is to be published in The Police Journal. The paper, which was written by Prof Gemma Briggs (OU), Dr Leanne Savigar-Shaw (University of Staffordshire) and Dr Helen Wells (Keele University) focuses on police officer interactions with mobile phone offenders. This work was part of the ‘We Need To Talk About Hands Free’ project, which involved participation from policing partners and was funded by The Road Safety Trust.

Mobile phone use by drivers continues to be a significant safety issue, leading to increasing deaths and injuries worldwide. Phone-using drivers demonstrate poor hazard detection, reduced situational awareness, longer reaction times for critical events and are four times more likely to crash than undistracted drivers. None of these factors are improved by the use of a handsfree kit, due to the cognitive distraction phone interaction causes drivers. While research recognises that handsfree phone-use is problematic, current UK law does not as only handheld phone use is illegal.

Problematic legislation, which only recognises one form of phone distraction, means that even if it were possible to convince all drivers to obey the law as it stands, we would not eliminate deaths and injuries caused by distracted driving. Instead, it is likely that drivers would switch to the legal (handsfree) form of the behaviour.

Nevertheless, every police roadside ‘stop’ of a handheld phone-using driver is a potential opportunity to educate about distraction, meaning that officers can have a vital role in both enforcing the law and providing additional advice which benefits road safety. This research was therefore focused on understanding what happens when officers interact with phone using drivers at the roadside, with a view to exploring the types of interaction and advice they offer.

Having surveyed 411 officers, and interviewed a further 10, from 28 different UK forces, three key themes emerged regarding interactions with offenders: (1) officers focused on handheld phone-use predominantly, associating the dangers with visual and manual distraction, while advising handsfree as a legal alternative; (2) officers used discretion in their considerations for prosecution, dependent on the context of phone-use and attributes of the offender; (3) officers wished to appear fair, and were keen for a positive relationship with the public, which impacted how they negotiated encounters with offenders.

Police officers were keen to educate offenders, and 76% agreed that phone use should always be prosecuted. However, 72% believed (wrongly) that handsfree phone-use is safer than handheld use, and 82% said they actively and routinely advise offenders to use handsfree in future. For many officers, being able to suggest a switch to handsfree use made the interaction easier while maintaining a positive public view of the police.

Results highlight the need for targeted education for officers on the dangers of handsfree phone-use, specific guidance on negotiating officer-offender interactions, and a change in practice to ensure handsfree phone use is not routinely recommended to offenders as an alternative to handheld use.  

You can read more about the findings in the associated article in Policing Insight and in the paper itself, which is published for open access.

Prof Gemma Briggs (OU), Dr Leanne Savigar-Shaw (University of Staffordshire), Dr Helen Wells (Keele University)