In Australia it’s illegal to drive while talking on a mobile phone – even stopped in traffic. It’s legal to drive while on the phone using a hands-free setup, however studies have shown that any use of a phone while driving adversely affects driving skills – it’s as if you’re driving while under the influence of alcohol.

Now the police will stop and fine you if they catch you, but much like speed cameras this could be considered a revenue raising tactic as much as truly increasing onroad safety.

Mobile phone towers share a mobile phone connection around, and as per CSI shows and the like it seems likely that telcos would have little difficulty calculating a phone’s position and hence speed/direction of travel using simple triangulation.

So the obvious thing that jumps out at me is that they could team up and automatically deactivate phones from the carrier networks when they’re travelling above a certain speed.

It doesn’t cater to car passengers on phones, using a phone while on a bus/train, or perhaps calling for help in a kidnapping. But it still strikes me as a more effective road safety tactic. However it won’t happen. Why?

Because the police could claim it’s too hard to implement, as could the telcos. The telcos would also drag their heels for the lack of any profit in it for themselves.