When working at Magistrates' Court a while ago I saw loads of people fined and having licences endorsed for this.
Apart from the danger, it's financial madness. You get a fine and points, so you're paying out for years to come on your insurance.

There's no defence, either. If the police see you even holding a phone they'll do you. No amount of phone bills you can produce in court will convince the Mags that you weren't talking on it - it might not have been your phone, and anyway you could've been answering a call and not making one.

You don't even need to be driving. If you pull over but don't switch the engine off, you're still liable.

I even heard a taxi driver protest, quite plausibly I thought, that he was reaching over to a satnav in the dark and it just looked like a phone, but he was still fined.

I heard lots of excuses, but never saw a single driver found not guilty. All were hammered.

So there's a little crumb of comfort, eh.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 15:08, 2 replies)

?
"You don't even need to be driving. If you pull over but don't switch the engine off, you're still liable."

Is that really true? I'd heard someone say it, but thought it was bollocks.

Bloody hell, that's a bit shite... If I ever get someone try to phone me when I'm on my way home from work and I pull into a side street, I don't always turn the engine off.

Edit: Well, I will now, obviously.
( Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 15:40, closed)

Yup, it's true.
Much like many of this particular regime's things-which-are-illegal-anyway-but-we-want-to-make-more-money-from-fines laws.
While I agree that driving whilst using a phone should be classed as "without due care and attention" I actually applaud people who do it* -- since they are just as safe, according to our government, as someone pulled up at the side of the road to make or take a call.
*I don't really, but I feel a certain ambivalence at times.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 17:58, closed)

Except for Jimmy Carr of course
www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1220999/Jimmy-Carr-gets-phone-driving-charge-Mr-Loophole-tells-court-He-telling-joke.html
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 23 Dec 2009, 11:20, closed)