Transport Ministry reviewing use of devices for video calls in cars

Gail Alexan­der

The Trans­port Min­istry is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the in­creas­ing use of mo­bile and wind­screen-mount­ed de­vices for video calls, record­ing and live stream­ing while dri­ving to de­ter­mine whether ad­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry pro­vi­sions are need­ed, says Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our.

Za­k­our con­firmed the min­istry’s cur­rent re­view of the sit­u­a­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, while re­ply­ing to a ques­tion from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs.

Attzs had asked Za­k­our to in­di­cate whether the Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing ad­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry or en­force­ment mea­sures to ad­dress the grow­ing use of wind­screen-mount­ed de­vices for video calls, record­ing, or live stream­ing while dri­ving, which may dis­tract dri­vers and im­pair vis­i­bil­i­ty and road safe­ty.

Za­k­our said the min­istry is deeply con­cerned about the in­creas­ing use of such de­vices while dri­ving, as these prac­tices have the po­ten­tial to dis­tract dri­vers, ob­scure vis­i­bil­i­ty and sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pro­mise road safe­ty.

While tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to evolve, Za­k­our said the fun­da­men­tal oblig­a­tion of a dri­ver is to main­tain full con­trol of a ve­hi­cle and un­di­vid­ed at­ten­tion to the road, re­mains un­changed.

“The min­istry is there­fore close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the grow­ing trends in mo­bile and pe­riph­er­al de­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly of those that may be used in ways that un­der­mine the in­tent and ef­fec­tive­ness of ex­ist­ing dri­ving laws,” Za­k­our said.

“This re­view is aimed at de­ter­min­ing whether ad­di­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry pro­vi­sions, clear de­f­i­n­i­tions or strength­en­ing en­force­ment mech­a­nisms are re­quired to ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress the ma­jor forms of dis­tract­ed dri­ving.”

He al­so said the re­cent in­crease in traf­fic fines forms part of a broad­er, na­tion­al road safe­ty pol­i­cy frame­work and is not an iso­lat­ed mea­sure.