Figures from the DVLA show that 32,980 CU 80 (Breach of Requirements as to control of a vehicle, such as using a mobile phone) tickets were issued in 2016, meaning convicted drivers paid out £3,298,000 in £100 fines for the year.
However, the cost of a distracted driving ticket is more than just a one-off expense and can lead to other financial hits to the pocket. LV= estimates that a citation for a CU 80 offence could lead to more than a 20% increase in their insurance premiums. Based on an average £767 quote for fully-comprehensive insurance premiums in Q4 2016 and a load of 30%, convicted drivers would have paid a total extra of £7,588,698 for the year.
In 2017, traffic police issued 15,763 tickets for the first six months of the year, resulting in £2,612,900 in fines. The fine for a CU 80 increased to £200 on 1st March 2017 at the same time that motorists saw the average cost of car insurance rise as a result of changes to the personal injury discount rate as well as the increase in the Insurance Premium Tax.
Jonathan Hewett, Chief Marketing Officer, Octo Telematics said: “Distracted driving is a real threat to road safety. While we live in the age of the smartphone, not switching off behind the wheel costs lives and money. The police are doing an excellent job of enforcing road safety through fines and penalty points but cost can also act as a deterrent. Telematics devices encourage safer driving and reduce the likelihood of distracted and dangerous driving by providing insurers with data that helps them keep the cost of driving down with discounts for safer motorists.”
Telematics devices can gather data from smartphones and understand if the phone is being used for calls and active device handling, as well as whether the device is ‘awake’. Providers can then inform drivers of distracted driving activities and incentivize safe driving through rewards and reduced insurance premiums. Correlating smartphone use data with vehicle driving and contextual data can then be used to score distraction levels and this can be applied as an additional risk factor for usage-based insurance driver behaviour scoring and for insurers to coach drivers in order to reduce distracted driving.
Hugh Kenyon, Personal Lines Pricing Director at LV=, added: “Using your mobile phone while driving is exceptionally dangerous, putting both the driver and others around them in an extremely vulnerable situation. As a result, we take any fines received from distracted driving extremely seriously and the cost of car insurance can increase significantly. This is mainly because drivers with these penalties are more likely to make further claims. We would urge all drivers to not use their phone while driving.
Taking your eyes off the road for just a few seconds simply isn’t worth the risk of being involved in a serious accident.”
A CU 80 offence stays on a driver’s license for four years, incurring more than £1,454 in combined fines and increased premiums expense at current 2017 insurance premium levels and dependent on subsequent years’ average premium price fluctuations. This is the equivalent cost of a 10-night, all-inclusive holiday in the Maldives or a new Apple Macbook Pro. A second offence could carry a much larger fine of £1,000 and a six-month ban from driving.
Data provided by Brake, the road safety charity, showed that in 2015, out of 1,469 fatal crashes in Britain that led to one or more deaths, 400 were caused by ‘failure to look’ and 101 were due to driver in-vehicle distractions, distractions outside the vehicle and phone use.
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