Mobile Phones and Driving Offences: Contextualising the Need for Recent Legislative Changes
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00220183221096515 |
| Subject Matter | Case Notes |
Mobile Phones and Driving Offences:
Contextualising the Need for Recent
Legislative Changes
Bendt v Crown Prosecution Service [2022] EWHC
502 (Admin)
Keywords
Road Traffic Act 1988, Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986, mobile phone,
driving offence, hand-held interactive communication device
On the 14th June 2021 at Bexley Magistrates’Court the appellant, B, was convicted of an offence under
s.41D Road Traffic Act 1988 and Regulation 110 Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations
1986 (‘the 1986 regulations’). The factual basis of the conviction was straightforward and was not in
dispute. On the 21st September 2020 B was observed ‘driving erratically’(at [3]) on Trafalgar Square
in Central London. Whilst stationary at a set of traffic lights B was observed by a police officer
holding a mobile telephone, the screen of which was illuminated and which B was further observed
‘swiping’with his thumb. The police officer stopped B’s car and ascertained that B had been using
the mobile telephone to play music through the car’s sound system and that at the relevant time B had
been changing the song.
Section 41D Road Traffic Act 1988 (as amended by s.26(1) Road Safety Act 2006) creates an offence
of failing to comply with a construction and use requirement specified in the 1986 regulations. This
includes a failure:
As to not driving or supervising the driving of a motor vehicle while using a hand-held mobile telephone or
other hand-held interactive communication device, or not causing or permitting the driving of a motor vehicle
by another person using such a telephone or other device. (Road Traffic Act 1988, s.41D(b))
Regulation 110(1) of the 1986 regulations specifies that ‘No person shall drive a motor vehicle on a road
if he is using (a) a hand-held mobile telephone; or (b) a hand-held device of a kind specified in paragraph
(4).’At the time that the present case was decided, para (4) of the 1986 regulations identified a specified
hand-held device as ‘a device, other than a two-way radio, which performs an interactive communication
function by transmitting and receiving data.’In this context a device was ‘to be treated as hand-held if it
is, or must be, held at some point during the course of making or receiving a call or performing any other
interactive communication function (Regulation 110(6)(a))’.
It was the conclusion of the magistrates, based on the facts presented, that B’s use of the mobile phone
in such a way constituted the use, whilst driving, of an ‘interactive communication device’for the pur-
poses of s.41D Road Traffic Act 1988 and Regulation 110 of the 1986 regulations. B appealed the
Case Note
The Journal of Criminal Law
2022, Vol. 86(2) 126–129
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00220183221096515
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