Not so long ago, driving in the UK used to be a fairly carefree and pleasurable experience for many people. Road rage was unheard of and drivers were even known to be courteous to each other.  After passing my driving test in June 1986 just 12 weeks after turning 17, I immediately joined the ‘elite’ group of teenagers on the road. Cruising the streets in my 1976 Triumph 2000TC, my only distraction was having to turn over the Spandau Ballet cassette in my Harry Moss stereo!  Spirit in the Sky by hippy revival band Doctor and the Medics was top of the charts and a gallon of 4 star petrol was £1.76 (39p a litre). A year’s third party, fire and theft insurance for a 17 year old cost just £200 and despite my meagre apprentice’s wages of £70 a week, running a car was pretty affordable and fun.

When we wanted to speak to our friends, we’d simply phone the landline of their house  one of their parents would wearily answer. At night, we’d meet in Camberley High Street with our elderly cars and would visit the recently opened McDonalds for one of their fancy Big Macs and a root beer. There was no internet, Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, and Twitter was part of the noise an owl made! Myself and several friends even had the then popular CB radios in our cars, so we were able to chat with each other as well as to an assortment of random freaks on the airwaves. Using the CB whilst on the move required a certain degree of concentration, but as you were rarely saying anything remotely  important, grappling with the coiled microphone cord was never an issue. If you happened to see a police car, you would use the CB to let any fellow ‘breakers’  within a mile radius know that there was a ’smokey bear’ in the area. Most of the time though, the little CB radio sat crackling through its tinny loudspeaker with the pleading voices of bored teenagers calling , “one four for a copy” in the hope that they could share their angst with a fellow soul.

Fast-forward 23 years and today’s teenagers mercilessly thrash their Saxo’s and Civic’s, whilst paying the best part of £2000 for 12 month’s insurance. The 5 watt Harry Moss cassette player with a manual tuning knob is nothing but a relic from the past as even the most basic car has a CD player, and many have Ipod docking, MP3 and MP4 connectivity and miniature TV screens for watching DVD’s. One thing that hasn’t changed so much is the need to keep in touch with your friends, family and current boyfriend/girlfriend, and for this, the mobile telephone changed everything. I remember in 1985 when the first generation of analogue cellular phones became available and were so expensive that they were the preserve of the very rich only. A Sunday newspaper colour supplement of the time carried a full-page advert for the Excell M2 handheld mobile phone, alongside a gentleman parking his Rolls Royce next to his LearJet! With its non-removable NiCad battery that boasted a talk time of 1/2 hour and a standby time of 6 hours, it cost a staggering £850 and calls were over £1 per minute! You’d have to sign up for a 3 year contract at £50 a month too, and even then, coverage was pretty limited (a bit like Orange today!). It wasn’t until 1989 that I had my first ‘car phone’ which was exactly that – a fixed phone in my car (by then, a 3 year old Renault 25). I felt like a millionaire as I called my friends for no reason other than to tell them with pride that I was ‘on my carphone’. Reception was terrible most of the time and I was paying around 36p a minute as well as £35 a month ‘line rental’.

Nowadays, many 10 year old kids have pay-as-you-go mobile phones with cameras. Any respectable teenager will have a phone with at least a 3 megapixel camera, an MP3 player, video recording, a selection of games (in case there’s nobody to talk to) and the facility to send and receive SMS text messages. With ‘talktime bundles’ that might offer 700 minutes of chat and 700 texts in a month, the cost of keeping in touch has never been cheaper!

Whilst it’s great to call someone and have a chat, it’s the SMS ‘text message’ that’s really revolutionised the way we communicate. Gone are the days when we’d ‘phone a friend’ and ask them if they fancied a quick pint. Now, a few seconds to text ‘R U UP 4 A PINT’ negates the need to actually speak to anyone,and the little bleep (or 30 second sample of some awful Techno song) brings the swift reply ‘YEP C U IN 10′  and it’s a date!

A staggering 70 million text messages are sent each year in the UK and everywhere you look, people are frantically thumbing the latest Nokia, Sony Eriksson and Motorola phones. It’s spawned a whole new language where punctuation, grammar and spelling are no longer even slightly important. If it can be said at all, you can probably condense it into the 160 characters that a single SMS allows. Want to meet single girls in your area? Text FLIRT to 80268 (texts cost £1.50 each). Want to order a Pizza but can’t pick up the phone? Text DOUBLE PEPPERONI to 85432. Entering a competition just takes a single text of A. B.or C to a premium text number. Want to see your inane babblings scrolling across the bottom of the TV dueing a reality show? Just text ‘ I FINK SPENCER IS WELL HOT – HE SHD NEVR GO’ and be grateful that your 50p (plus your standard network rate!) was so well spent.

Now, as the content of every single text is obviously of paramount importance, they have to be responded to immediately! Let’s face it, when you’ve received a text, how many of you don’t bother looking straight away? Not many, and I’m often guilty too. These days, the only texts I receive are from my staff, either letting me know that they’re ‘throwing a sickie’ or are going to be late. A little throbbing of my Blackberry often results in something like ‘SOZ BUT I AINT CUMIN TO WRK 2 DAY – BIN SICK ALL NITE, allowing me to respond with a suitable reposte in a language they’ll understand. ‘FINE, P45 IN THE POST – COME AND GET TOOLBOX TOMORROW’ is usually soon followed by a phonecall to see if I was serious.

So, as there’s nothing as important as a text message, the new menace on the roads is people texting behind the wheel! Since it’s been against the law to use a handheld telephone whilst moving, I reckon that people have simply swithced to texting instead, figuring that it’s the safer option! Just 3 months ago, a 21 year old waitress was jailed for 5 years after she ran into the back of a stationary car at 70mph, killing the occupant. Police evidence proved that she’d sent over 20 texts and made numerous calls whilst driving along a busy dual carriageway. Yesterday, as I left work at 3pm and joined the busy A331, a black ‘56 reg. Golf was in the outside lane at around 60MPH and was clearly drifting back and forth across the white lines, much to the obvious annoyance of the rest of us. There were 2 children in the back, of whom neither appeared to be wearing seatbelts and both leaning forward, obviously watching with glee (or dismay) as their mother, hunched over the steering wheel was frantically texting. As I pulled alongside, I could clearly see her phone in hand and eyes on the tiny screen, oblivious to the risk she was taking. At one point, she even pulled out to overtake a slower car and must’ve hit 80mph, before pulling back in again, fingers still tap-tapping at the keyboard. After about 6 miles, we reached the exit, and she simply pulled off without even indicating. I noticed that by then she’d actually put her phone down, and looked like she was wondering what was going on around her. I don’t even know if there’s a kind of smug ‘tut tut’ gesture you can make to show that you ‘know what they’re up to and don’t approve’ , but I couldn’t think of it, so a simple shake of the head had to do.

The particularly sad thing is that an adult should lead by example, yet to her children (assuming they were), it would appear that texting at 70mph is all OK and not at all likely to result in a fatal accident. On this particular stretch of  road, there’s already been numerous accidents that probably weren’t caused by someone texting, so to add this new factor can only increase the risk by a huge amount. In the USA, although presently not illegal to text whilst driving,  reserachers found that a texting driver is equally as likely to have an accident as a drunk driver!

I’ve seen numerous people texting whilst driving and apart from making a disapproving face at them, there’s little I can do. The police can only catch so many people ‘at it’ so unfortunately, the ones that do get prosecuted have already ploughed into a bus queue of pensioners, or mown-down an infant on a pedestrian crossing.  I’m not against the use of mobiles in cars provided they have a proper handsfree setup. All our company vehicles are equipped with Bluetooth kits that enable conversation without taking your hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road. My phone can be in my pocket, yet it answers automatically and routes the audio through the stereo speakers having muted the radio. More importantly, my own handset has what’s called a ‘phone only’ mode, which onjce selected, will only ring for an actual call and if a text, email or MMS is received, it remains silent. That way, I’ll simply have to wait until I get home before I find out that one of my staff has an appointment at the STD clinic the next day, and so will be late for work!

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