Birds Eye View

BIRDS EYE VIEW by Carol Messenger

Do you want to save $1000 - and better still, four demerit points?

That is the penalty for being caught using a mobile phone whilst driving in Western Australia. Big penalty, yet as you drive around all day, the absolutely ‘huge’ number of people that you see holding a phone to their ear whilst driving is staggering.

I am lucky, in that my truck has Bluetooth technology meaning whenever the phone rings, I can answer it by touching the phone button on my dash and it plays the conversation through my radio. Not brilliantly, and quite echoey but it does the job and it doesn't put me at risk of being fined. With my current set up, I can get the general gist of the message and for any specifics I can call back when I stop. The problem is however, that I have an old car that doesn't have Bluetooth and for that I have tried a couple of those adaptors where you dial into a radio frequency but have never had any luck getting any of them to work. I ended up getting a phone cradle that attaches to the windscreen so I am hands free - but it is still not a brilliant solution.

Then I was offered an opportunity to trial

Vehicles transferred from interstate and registered in Western Australia increased from 29,990 between May 2019 to April 2020 to 40,339 between May 2020 to April 2021. This is a 10,000 car or almost 35 per cent increase on the previous year.

Driver's licences transferred from interstate increased from 17,880 between May 2019 to April 2020 to 20,133 between May 2020 to April 2021 - an increase of more than 2,000.

The Department of Transport has hired additional Customer Service Officers to meet demand.

Residents with a driver's licence issued from an Australian State or Territory