Its the Daily Mail, need I say any more.

But if it happened I would be more than upset since I only use my phone rarely in the car and then its legally connected via Bluetooth.

Drivers using phones illegally should pay the penalty, 6 points for the offence and a one year ban on the 2nd offence etc. All with appropriate fines.

Law abiding drivers should not loose out because of the minority.

It was in The Times as well.

I think this is a very interesting technical challenge, as many others have said. What about something that detected whether the phone was talking to the car via Bluetooth and allowed that? That would solve the driver problem but would disable the passengers' phones - and possibly the phones of passers-by! Disabling the phone completely would also presumably disable the automatic emergency calls that some cars make when their airbags are deployed.

Enforcement might seem to be perhaps the way to go, but there is a balance to be struck. If drivers were certain to be caught and fined £x and 3 or even fewer points, they wouldn't use the phone. Realistically the chance of being caught is very low, even if police patrols were increased tenfold, so the perceived risk of using a mobile, even at 6 points and £lots, is very small. Even if the penalty were 10 years in jail and a subsequent ban of 15 years, the perceived risk of being caught and punished is very low.

That leaves driver education and publicity. They worked to a great extent on seat belts and on drink driving.

all bluetooth devices have a specific address like the pc on the net, so a phone can be isolated without disabling other phones

so by altering the software they should be able to control what the hands free does in a certain area of the car,I doubt it will be a problem

Phones do not connect to the network via bluetooth. They are identified on the networks by the SIM card (subscriber identification module).

They can locate a phone by GPS but, not all phones have that and the ones that do can be switched off by the user as its uses alot of battery power. They can locate it by cell station triangulation but, only to within approx 3/4 of a mile so they aren't going to know if it's in a car by that information as they won't know the location of the car unless all cars are fitted with GPS trackers and they crossreference that information. Even if the car has GPS tracking and the Phone has GPS swtiched on I'd doubt very much they could identify which seat the phone is being used from.

Then of course, What about cars and phones without this? Are the government going to make it compulsory to have GPS tracking fitted on all vehicles and make all mobile phone users have GPS switched on in their phones settings 24 hours a day? Actually, the idiots in government are stupid enough to try and enforce this. much like the number plate purchasing rubbish they brought in to try and reduce car crime.

Why must everything be made soo difficult when there is a much simpler solution? Even in Countries like Ukraine they realise that it's easier to just make fines eye watering big enough to reduce problems. They did just that in Odessa some years ago to reduce car accidents and it worked very quickly. Anyone who caused a car accident had the fine quadrupled for dangerous driving.

better just to disable the buttons / keys, no texting or call making whilst the engine is running unless a hands free voice control kit installed in the vehicle

Best not to use them at all, I listened to a heated argument from 2 cars away this morning, driver shouting at rear passengers phone call, car was going all over the road and had several near misses.

Ban them full stop!