Grieving grand-daughter's plea as 21,000 Kiwi motorists caught flouting mobile phone rules

Friday, 4 January 2019

Curtis Raymond Lawson leaves the Napier District Court on September 10, 2010 to begin a sentence of nine months' home detention and three years' disqualification from driving for causing the death of 93-year-old Phyllis Penman.

The granddaughter of a 93-year-old woman killed by a texting driver is issuing a heartfelt plea to summer motorists: stay off your phones.

'I encourage each and every single person to turn their phones off while driving, or at the very least put their phone on silent and out of reach so they cannot be distracted while driving and can fully give all their attention to the important task of driving,' Helen Small said.

Small's grandmother, Phyllis Penman, was hit by a texting driver on a pedestrian crossing in 2010. She died in hospital five hours later.

'She was the first one to be killed after the law [banning mobile phone use in cars] came in,' Small said. 'It was absolutely devastating. It's something that you never get over.'

Phyllis Penman, 93, was killed on a pedestrian crossing by a driver distracted by a text message.

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Driver, then 21-year-old Curtis Lawson, admitted dangerous driving causing death and was sentenced to home detention.

Since then Small has been volunteering with Road Safe Hawke's Bay, and is frustrated at the number of people continuing to use their phones while driving.

'The cellphone message definitely needs to be kept out there,' she said.

'It's not going to bring her back, but we can make a difference for another family. I'm trying to get something positive out of what was a terrible, terrible tragedy.'

The most recent figures from police for 2018 - up until November 30 - 21,153 New Zealanders were ticketed $1.69 million for flouting rules around using mobile phones while driving. That's an average of 67 tickets a day.

New Zealand Police road policing manager Superintendent Steve Greally said the figures were provisional data, drawn from a 'dynamic' operational database. 'This is subject to change as new information is recorded.'

The figures show 2998 motorists were ticketed in Canterbury, 919 in the Southern District, 2062 in Wellington, 1596 in Waikato, and 2910 in Auckland. The rest of the tickets were divided between Waitemata, Counties/Manukau, Bay of Plenty, Eastern District, Central District, and Tasman.

The penalties for using a mobile phone whilst driving were an $80 fine, and 20 demerit points. In 2017 the New Zealand Transport Agency ruled out increasing the penalty after calls to double it.

Constable Ben Grant, of the Canterbury Highway Patrol Unit, said police were 'working harder to try and detect those offences.

'There's no doubt we're putting more focus on that offending than we have in the past. The more that people do use mobile phones while they're driving, then there's more chance that one day a child might run out from behind a car … it only takes one little glance at your phone to put other people and yourself at risk.'

Road safety commentator Clive Matthew-Wilson believed police weren't doing enough to penalise texting drivers.

'You can stand beside any major intersection in the country and watch drivers talking and texting as they drive by. These drivers continue to use their phones because they consistently get away with it, for the most part,' he said.

There were nine road deaths during the summer holiday period (between December 24 and January 3). On Saturday, a person died after hitting a tree in Canterbury, and a motorcyclist was seriously injured on a Petone highway after colliding with a car just before midday.