Ali­cia Llanos

Hold­ing on to your phone while chat­ting and dri­ving may land you in le­gal trou­ble by year's-end.

The same fate awaits you if you text while dri­ving. At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Jack Warn­er an­nounced a tough mea­sure to out­law the phone prac­tice, say­ing it was meant to im­prove safe­ty on the roads. Warn­er is giv­ing mo­torists three months to out­fit their ve­hi­cles with hands-free mo­bile gad­gets. He re­vealed that Cab­i­net had ap­proved the pro­vi­sions, which would be em­bod­ied in the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle (Amend­ment) Bill 2010. The bill is to be tak­en to Par­lia­ment. Warn­er said: "This bill will make it a statu­to­ry of­fence for the use of mo­bile phones while dri­ving." He cit­ed a Cana­di­an study, which said dri­vers us­ing their mo­bile phones are 18 times more like­ly to cause an ac­ci­dent.

Warn­er, speak­ing at the week­ly post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence, said the bill would be tak­en to Par­lia­ment in three months. He said the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the con­ve­nience of mo­bile phones, but was al­so aware of the dan­gers they pose when be­ing used while dri­ving. Warn­er said un­der the pro­posed bill, peo­ple found us­ing their mo­bile phones while dri­ving would face a $5,000 fine or a two-month hard labour jail sen­tence. He said mo­torists would be giv­en a "three-month mora­to­ri­um" to out­fit their ve­hi­cles with hands-free gad­gets. Warn­er said with­out hands-free de­vices, mo­torists wish­ing to use their phones could pull over and stop or al­low an oc­cu­pant to an­swer the phone, per­mit the call to go to voice mail or let some­one else dri­ve.

He said the use of mo­bile phones for talk­ing and/or tex­ting while dri­ving are con­trib­u­tors to the car­nage on the na­tion's roads. The ban on mo­bile phone use while dri­ving was first pro­posed by then Prime Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Patrick Man­ning in the 2007 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. Man­ning moved to amend the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Act to make it an of­fence to use a mo­bile phone when dri­ving and to have tele­vi­sion mon­i­tors in the front seats of ve­hi­cles. The Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle (Amend­ment) Bill 2010 will rep­re­sent an­oth­er ma­jor leg­isla­tive move by the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure road safe­ty. In1994, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment passed the mo­tor ve­hi­cle seat belt reg­u­la­tion, which made it an of­fence to dri­ve with­out wear­ing a seat belt.

The seat belt leg­is­la­tion came in­to ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 1995, and stip­u­lat­ed that mo­torists caught with­out a seat belt could face a fine of $500. Tough an­ti-cell­phone laws have been in­tro­duced in sev­er­al coun­tries and some states of the Unit­ed States.