Road Safety Bill [HL]

Perhaps the Minister will reflect on this pointbefore Report, on the basis that one is looking at the mischief with which the legislation seeks to deal. With drunken driving and related offences, it is a very grave mischief to have the keys in your pocket and to intend to enter the car, and that should be quite sufficient. However, if you are in a car with a mobile phone, the mischief depends on what you seek to do and where you are. If, for example, you are stuck in a traffic jam, everyone is brought to a halt, you switch off the engine as a symbol that you do not intend to drive further at least until you have switched it on, and you then use a mobile phone for a sensible, humanitarian purpose, it seems to me that there is no mischief. Likewise, following the Minister’s arguments, if you pull into the kerb, switch off the engine, put the keys in your pocket, which is what I do when I want to use a mobile phone, and then use it for whatever sensible or other purpose, I cannot see that any mischief is created. Three times in the past year, in a car with an electronically controlled engine, which can go wrong, I have had the engine die on me in the middle lane of the M1, in the rush hour, with traffic passing at 60 miles per hour. That is very frightening. If it were unlawful for me to use my mobile phone to alert the police and the rescue authorities in such a situation, it would be absolutely absurd. The car will not move. Consequently, it seems to me that there is some room for flexibility here, and I would ask the Minister to think further about it.