How to stay on track
Driving laws help keep you and others safe. Some driving offences won't land you in court, but others will.
New driving laws came into force in March. Every driver should know about them.
Three facts about the legal driving seat
1. Using your mobile phone
It is against the law to use a handheld mobile phone while you drive. If you get caught, you will incur six penalty points and pay a £200 fine. New drivers will lose their licence.
If you end up in court, you could be fined up to £1,000. Drivers of buses or goods vehicles can be fined up to £2,500.
The same penalties apply to using a handheld phone in standing traffic, at traffic lights or while parked up with your car's engine running.
2. Using your smart phone as a sat nav
Many of us rely on Google Maps on our smart phones to navigate.
You can still use your smart phone as a sat nav, as long as you:
- set it up before your journey
- do not touch it while driving
- place it in a holder correctly.
If you need to touch your phone – to change your route, for example – stop in a safe place first and turn off the engine.
You could be charged with careless driving if you let your sat nav distract you.
3. Car seats
We all want children to be safe. Children must use the correct type of car booster seat until they are 12 years old or 135cm tall.
If you are about to buy a booster seat, make sure you choose the best one.
New laws mean that backless booster seats first brought to market on or after 1 March 2017 can only be used by children who are taller than 125cm and weigh more than 22kg.
So, while you can legally keep on using backless booster seats you already own, it's worth bearing in mind that many experts say backless booster seats are not safe for younger children. High-backed booster seats are a safer option.
If you are charged for a motoring offence and you aren't sure what to do, think about seeking legal advice.
Your Comments
As will be retuning ur radio, smoking, putting lippey on using mirror,
There's some interesting information about what is and isn't legal on the RAC website.
Visit www.rac.co.uk.
I know you not allowed to eat while driving but I haven`t seen anywhere about smoking the only thing was about not smoking with minors in the car. The number of times you follow a car in traffic and suddenly a plume of thick vapour from E cigs comes out of a car I think they are worse than normal fags. I don`t smoke now gave up 37 years ago
smoking in car's when driving
altogether.
a while back I seen a post from the police regarding a spate of people in one area being pulled over by bogus cops and they stated if someone is trying to make you pull over to call 999 and keep going until it is confirmed.
can you also guarantee that no passenger in a vehicle ever needs to make an emergency call and if they did but could not do it you would take personal responsibility for any loss of life or other problems caused.
in the earlier days of mobile phones I have come across an accident with people trapped on a series of bends on a country road, I could not call for help from there because of no signal and had to leave them to make the call
Sat nav...say if whilst driving down the m/way a message comes up "incident ahead, would you like to change route" and you can't touch the sat nav to change route..", do you pull over onto the hard shoulder?
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