Right, quick law lesson. In order to prosecute somebody for a road traffic offence (ie using a mobile phone), it has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, with the burden of proof being placed upon the prosecution. (presumption of innocence). Now if an individual walked into a police station to report somebody using a mobile phone, the following information would be needed to even begin looking into the matter, time, date, location, vehicle reg, and description of the driver. very often the person reporting doesn't even have those basic details. Even if those details were provided and the person reporting was willing to provide a statement a prosecution would be unlikely to succeed as it will be the witnesses word against the drivers word and therefore an element of doubt would exist. Somebody suggested that phone records could be checked....firstly its not as simple as merely checking phone records, authorities are required before going through a persons phone details and if granted, which is unlikely due to the matter being a road traffic offence, (proportionality, justification, a persons right to a private life under ECHR etc etc), all this would show was that the phone was being used at a specific time. It wouldn't show who was making the call or sending the text, and it would only show a rough area where the phone was located at the time of the call, especially if the three masts used to triangulate the phones location are a fair distance apart. (We do this when trying to locate high risk (suicidal) missing people and sometime it gives massive search areas because the masts as so far apart). The technology does not exist to pinpoint an exact location, just an area. So in essence it is very difficult to prosecute somebody for using a mobile phone on a report from a single individual. Funnily enough, people seem to put their phones down when they see a police car behind them or passing them....those that don't are usually given a ticket or sent on a driver awareness course.
