Last time updated:
May 8, 2025
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Increasing numbers of collisions and deaths worldwide are caused by people using their mobile phone while driving. Drivers using a phone are four times more likely to be involved in a collision than undistracted drivers, taking much longer to react to any hazards they detect. In the UK, as in many countries, handheld phone use is illegal, and recent changes to the law have clarified that any kind of touching of a phone is an offence, as well as increasing the penalty for doing so. While it makes sense that a driver who takes their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel may fail to notice and react to hazards, research has clearly shown that handsfree phone use causes the same dangerous effects on driving. This is not widely known, and in most jurisdictions handsfree phone use is legal – making it appear a safe and logical alternative to handheld phone use. After all, drivers might be forgiven for thinking that if it was dangerous, it would be illegal.
Opportunity to educate
Policing efforts are understandably focused on enforcement of the law as it stands, but even a massive enforcement effort, leading to 100% compliance with the law, would not eliminate deaths and injuries caused by distracted driving, because these are also caused by handsfree use. We also know that enforcing the law won’t be enough because, in a survey of more than 1,500 people, 36% of phone-using drivers who were asked what they would do if caught using their phone handheld said they would continue to use it, but hide it better. Another 33% said they would switch to using their phone handsfree. In neither case is enforcing the law the answer to the problem, nor has the existence of the law been a deterrent.
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. These encounters are crucial when we consider that new technologies, such as AI-based cameras that can detect handheld phone use, are increasingly being used by police forces to enforce the law. They only detect handheld phone use, operate remotely, and generate a warning or notice of intended prosecution some time after the event – providing no opportunity for education or information to be shared about distracted driving more generally. But what do we know about what happens when officers interact with phone-using drivers at the roadside? Are these encounters as constructive as they might be in preventing distracted driving?
Officers lack understanding
Our research project – We Need To Talk About Handsfree, funded by the Road Safety Trust – surveyed 411, and interviewed 10, officers from 28 of the 43 UK forces about their interactions with mobile phone offenders and their understanding of the dangers of handsfree phone use. Around two thirds (64%) of the participants worked in a dedicated roads policing unit (RPU), while the remainder had other roles but regularly encountered mobile phone offenders. The officers were asked questions about their understanding of distraction as well as how and when they enforced the law; 97% of officers agreed that illegal phone use by drivers represents a serious safety issue, and 76% agreed it should always be prosecuted.
However, 72% believed (wrongly) that handsfree phone use is safer than handheld use. In fact, many officers, like many drivers, described handsfree as a safe and viable alternative to handheld use, and were somewhat perplexed as to why more drivers didn’t take that option:
“There’s no need for people to be using the phone these days when they’re driving, you know? Most people have got Bluetooth.” (RPU officer, seven years’ experience).
“Mobile phone use really does annoy me. There’s so many devices that you can buy now to avoid that hand to the face, isn’t there?” (Response officer, eight years’ experience).
While 88% of officers agreed the public need more education about the dangers of phone use, and 91% said they try to provide that education, our research shows that a very significant proportion of officers themselves would benefit from more education about distracted driving. Most worryingly, 82% of our sample said they actively and routinely advise offenders to use handsfree in future:
“They’ve all got Bluetooth capabilities now, so if I stop someone for using the mobile phone, my first question is ‘why aren’t you using Bluetooth?’.” (RPU officer, 12 years’ experience).
“Yeah, with this guy in particular, I just said ‘you know, you have got Bluetooth facility in your van!’. So I do kind of go down that route first and he did have Bluetooth, it just failed to connect, so he just thought he’d pick up the phone. So, I do kind of give a bit of education about distracted driving.” (Response officer, eight years’ experience).
Maintaining police legitimacy
Perhaps unsurprisingly, officers were giving advice based around what is, and what is not, legal – but this is a problem when the law itself fails to reflect what is, and what is not, dangerous. Some of this misguided advice stems from officers themselves misunderstanding the dangers of handsfree use (52% said they thought, wrongly, that it was the same as talking to a passenger) but our interviews also reveal that, for many officers, being able to suggest a switch to handsfree use also served another purpose. A friendly suggestion, that helped the driver to (legally) achieve the same ends as the prohibited behaviour, was considered a way of maintaining policing legitimacy with people who might be called upon to assist policing in future:
“You’re gonna go knock the door and go ‘you’re a witness to X,Y,Z offence, can I have a statement please?’, and they go, ‘no, you took my driving licence off me six years ago because I was on my mobile phone’. The knock-on effects of dealing with people harshly, I think, are quite harmful.” (RPU officer, two years’ experience).
“I don’t tend to prosecute what I perceive to be the law-abiding folk cause when I’m in a sticky situation, and I’m wrestling around on the floor with someone, experience tells me that, for want of a better phrase, Middle England, who perceive they’ve just been persecuted on the motorway for doing 80, they’re still gonna come and help the police, however, they might just think twice before they do.” (RPU officer, 29 years’ experience).
This perspective helps to explain why, although the vast majority of officers felt phone use was dangerous and most thought it should always be prosecuted, nearly 50% also preferred to use discretion when deciding on an outcome. These officers were keen to prosecute dangerous behaviour, but also to define that for themselves, and many felt that a fine and points was the wrong disposal in some cases:
“Personally, I’m not in the business of taking away people’s driving licences. If I’ve got someone new in front of me who’s got maybe six points three or four years ago for a different offence, and if I deal with them for mobile phone, it’s gonna lose them their licence.” (RPU officer, two years’ experience).
“It can be a little bit more difficult when you know somebody’s going to get penalty points and then the insurance goes up, or whether there’s a licence for something or other and it can pull on your heartstrings a little bit.” (RPU officer, four years’ experience).
In these circumstances (and in the absence of, for example, the offer of a diversionary course as an alternative to prosecution), suggesting handsfree was an attractive way of navigating a potentially tricky encounter and ensuring that a driver would not be caught again.
Promoting distracted driving
For a variety of reasons, then, our research shows that some officers are giving out dangerous advice to drivers, promoting distracted driving – and in some cases actively enabling it by proudly helping motorists to set up what they believe to be a safer option; a handsfree system in their car.
Our latest research – ‘Why aren’t you using Bluetooth?!’: Officer understanding of the dangers of handheld and handsfree mobile phone-use by drivers – highlights significant tensions and misunderstandings operating when police officers encounter mobile phone using drivers, and that these encounters are currently less effective than they could be in preventing future harm on our roads. That’s why we want to share the message about the dangers of handsfree phone use, and encourage frontline officers and policing leaders to take a lead in giving advice that promotes safer driving, not just compliance with the law.
Our findings demonstrate some officers reluctance to prosecute is based on drivers being ‘decent folk’ or ‘law abiding citizens’, some inaccurate views about what ‘really’ constitutes problematic behaviour, and being motivated by concerns around police legitimacy and ‘fairness’. If these issues are not directly addressed, continued efforts to enforce the law against handheld phone use will not reduce the number of distracted drivers on the road, or the number of distraction-related collisions.
Our recommendations
Our findings point to the need for education for officers on the dangers of handsfree phone use. This education should contain evidence-based information on the dangers of different forms of phone use, and should ideally allow officers to experience handsfree distraction for themselves.
Guidance for officers which advises against routinely recommending handsfree phone use to offenders is needed. In the absence of such instruction, officers will continue to promote the use of handsfree to help negotiate potentially challenging encounters with offenders.
The re-introduction of evidence-based educational diversionary courses should also be considered for mobile phone offenders, as this would facilitate driver education about all kinds of distraction, assist officers in negotiating roadside stops by providing an alternative to prosecution, and ensure that offenders detected by technology can be offered education that has the potential to dissuade them from moving to handsfree phone use.
The article was originally published in Policing Insight https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/how-well-do-officers-understand-distracted-driving-and-how-do-they-police-it/
