Drivers on mobiles risk becoming killers

Lisa Thomas was on holiday in Lanzarote with her sister and younger daughter Gemma when tragedy struck.

Gemma had tried to persuade her sister Laura to go with them, but she did not want miss time off from her job as a teaching assistant.

Mrs Thomas was alerted by a neighbour that the police had been trying to get hold of her and spent an agonising 30 minutes not knowing why, all the while desperately trying to get hold of Laura.

It had been 10 days since Mrs Thomas had last seen her daughter.

Fighting off tears, she said: "That's the worst thing. I wish I'd never gone away. Gemma didn't want to get off the plane because then it would be real.

"The point I want to get across is that it's normal, hard-working people who use their phones at the wheel. They don't go out with the intention of killing someone but that's what could happen. Awareness needs to be raised of the distraction that a phone can cause."

Laura and Lewis Pagett were struck by their own vehicle alongside the A5 in Shropshire after a HGV crashed into it.

Lorry driver Ian Glover, 44, from Birmingham, is now in jail. He had been browsing explicit content on his phone when the crash happened.

Mrs Thomas, a health centre assistant at a doctors' surgery, said: "You wake up and it's with you, it's constantly on your mind. I miss her all the time."

The mother, of Great Haywood in Staffordshire, has given her full backing to a two-week campaign starting on Friday, which will see police on the look-out for drivers on their mobiles,

She said: "Laura was a beautiful caring lady and I could not have been more proud of her. To wake each morning with the sickness to the stomach is relentless, the emptiness and constantly missing her, wishing that none of this had happened.

Even the person who caused the collision, who perhaps has never committed a crime in his life but ended up in prison. His mates won't stay in touch and they won't visit like they said they will. His whole life will change, all for the sake of using a mobile phone behind the wheel."

Insp Sion Hathaway, of the Central Motorway Police, who is leading the operation, said 17 people died as a result of drivers using mobile phones in 2012 and it is predicted to be the biggest killer by next year. He said: "It's scary. We're not just talking about making phone calls – texting, using social media and watching TV on your phone all dramatically increase the likelihood of being involved in a collision."

Colette Bennett, of Crash Course, which is offered as an alternative to drivers who would otherwise receive a fixed penalty, said:

"They're often nice people but there are no prisons for nice people. They all go to the same place."