tommallett

In England we have banned using a mobile phone behind the wheel, eating behind the wheel or even doing your make-up in the vanity mirror at the traffic lights. Surely smoking should also be on that list?

The argument is, of course, two fold for the ban. It is not healthy for passengers and it also increases the risk of having an accident. I shall cover the first point first, as that is more of a focus for Autoviva, but the health issue should not be forgotten.

Monash University conducted research on the issue in 2003 and found that smoking has a direct correlation to an increase in car accidents over a five year period, contributing to nearly 13,000 extra accidents over a five year period in Australia alone.

It is obvious that smoking while behind the wheel should fall into the same category as using a mobile phone. The idea that lighting a cigarette, smoking it and then getting rid of the butt is not a distraction is laughable, and obvious in the extreme. It would question anyone’s intelligence to spell out the inherent dangers of holding a flame up to one’s face while driving and then holding an ember with the capability of burning fingers and carpets while in control of a two-tonne moving object…so I won’t.

The other aspect is health, as mentioned earlier. A recent study suggested that smoking in cars has a similar effect on health, especially to minors, as being trapped inside a smoky pub. Whether this should be the choice of a parent or not is the question at hand, and something I am not qualified to comment on.

Whether we are becoming too much of a nanny state, or not, by banning such activities is another question, of course. But to ban eating, drinking and telephoning and not smoking seems to me to be illogical and hypocritical from a road safety point of view.