Shropshire Star comment: We need to win battle for hearts and minds to stop drivers using their phones

Our survey about motorists using mobile phones gives two answers. Yes, and no.

Yes, the message is getting through and fewer drivers are breaking the law by checking their mobile phone while driving.

But no - more than a quarter of respondents admitted to having transgressed in that manner.

One of the findings in our Shropshire Star survey is particularly striking. Asked whether they thought using a mobile phone while driving was dangerous, almost everybody - 93 per cent - did. They thought so too, at only a slightly lower level, when we last did the survey in 2016.

And overwhelmingly, respondents also supported stronger punishments for those who break the law by using their mobile phones while driving. Already we have seen the law beefed up in this area.

So public awareness and public opinion are going in one direction. The police campaigns are clearly having an effect, along with some high-profile tragedies which have involved a driver being distracted by their phone. The sentences which have been imposed by the courts in those cases should make potential offenders at least think twice.

It is a battle for hearts and minds, and for a dose of common sense and social responsibility, which is being won. A parallel might be drawn with drink-driving, which for a long time was considered a bit of a lark by some people, but came to be recognised for the serious, and actually potentially murderous, crime that it is.

Beating the mobile phone problem is going to be especially difficult because so many people are wedded to them and cannot stop themselves from using them, even when there is no need or no urgency. They are not just phones, but information and entertainment devices.

They are also difficult to police, because this is an activity done in the privacy of motorists' cars. A drunken driver can be stopped by police, and is still drunk. A texter at the wheel has to be spotted, except in those exceptional cases when something truly awful happens which makes police investigate mobile phone records to look for evidence.

And there is still a level of ignorance. Did you know you are breaking the law if your hold your mobile while driving and look at it? You don't have to be making, or receiving, a call to be committing an offence. If it is performing any "interactive communication function" you are guilty.

Another message needs to go out, from motorists themselves, to relatives, friends, and colleagues.

It is this: "If I don't answer, it's because I'm driving."