Shoppers to be shown dial danger at wheel

Staff from Leeds City Council and the emergency services will be at the Owlcotes Shopping Centre, in Pudsey, today as part of a campaign to stop people using their phones while driving.

Members of the public will be given the opportunity to get into the driving seat of a stationary vehicle which has been hooked up to an electronic reaction tester.

The volunteers will be challenged to do two things at once and then shown how adversely this can affect reaction times.

Becky Prosser, road safety manager for Leeds City Council said: "The evidence shows that using a mobile phone while driving, makes you four times more likely to crash and, as we can demonstrate through practical exercises with the public, the reaction times of drivers using hand-held mobile phones are much slower than when they were concentrating fully on the task in hand.

"We want to encourage drivers to give themselves more time to concentrate and pay attention whilst driving and raise awareness of the issues that we sometimes forget about.

"We would advise drivers to always take regular breaks when driving, and to never use a mobile phone or pager device in the car."

Coun Richard Lewis, the council's executive board member for development and regeneration said: "Driving requires our full concentration. It is often easy to forget just how complex a task it is, especially for those of us who have been driving for many years."

West Yorkshire Police the Yorkshire Ambulance Service will also be in attendance to give advice and reassurance to members of the public about their role at the scene of a collision.

West Yorkshire Fire Service will also stage a rescue from a vehicle to demonstrate what fire crew are faced with when they have to deal with crashes caused by somebody being on their phone.