"NSW Police Minister fined for using phone in car, says he didn't know it was illegal"
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-21/nsw-police-minister-troy-grant-fined-for-using-phone-in-car/8372962

Would it have been an offence if he had used a camera, one that didn't have a mobile phone function?

If he could have legally used a camera then the I don't see why there is a law against using the camera function of a phone whilst a vehicle is stationary.

Yes, apparently using a mobile phone whilst stationary constitutes a dangerous distraction for the driver. On the other hand, apparently driving around with three small children screaming and fighting in the back seat isn't distracting at all. Or at least not distracting enough to make it illegal.

It's one of these stupid bloody laws that isn't really designed to improve public safety - it's all about revenue raising. Why not just raise taxes or rego fees or something?

Recent neuroscience research continues to confirm that the human brain is NOT capable of multitasking and particularly complex activities. You can 'get away' with it where different sectors of the brain are involved. But that isn't driving or operating machinery, or many other things.

Bluntly, if you manage a child while walking and you are talking on the mob, you are in fact doing one or the other, not both. It is sequential attention with switching in between. As well, that 05 second you swap attention each time and you will be doing it many times, adds up to totally blank mental screens where you are conscious of NOTHING.

After having looked at the research I turn the damned thing OFF when I get into the car, when I take control of a motor vehicle.

What I have detailed is recent and indisputable, peer-reviewed and in the right journals of course.

Folks, we are already mainly on 'auto-pilot' when driving a car. We have lapses of attention as our mind goes off on the worries of the day, past upsetting events and so on, or simply slides into neutral.

Yes too, some have screaming kids or are talking up positives or the matters of the day with kids as they drive and being inattentive in the process.

I was about to opine that it is a wonder we get there safely, but when I thought about it, many don't.

I often see people using mobile phones while driving.
Also not wearing seat-belts and of course with
kids misbehaving in the back seats. Then there's the
speesters and the erratic drivers. How to encourage
safe behaviour - fines and licence suspension seem to
be the only deterrents because education isn't working.

Other activities that are illegal while driving, but rarely policed.

Eating a hot pie, drinking hot coffee, adjusting the radio, adjusting the GPS, the list goes on, but the only one usually targeted is the mobile phone.

It is my understanding though that if you are pulled upon the side of the road, you can't have your foot on the brake while using the phone, you need to have the car in nutral, with hand brake off if you have the engine running.

While I agree that mobile phones should be turned off when driving, particularly texting capacity, I'm afraid your "recent and indisputable, peer-reviewed" science is a pile of twaddle leoj. Perhaps like climate science, the government funded researchers knew very well the result required by their funders, & arranged their research to supply that result to order

Surely you have seen footage on the many "COPS" shows on TV of the cop in a very high speed car chase, reporting on his radio every turn made by the perused car?

If a motor racing fan you would have seen drivers interviewed at full racing speed around Bathurst, with the interview transmitted live on TV. Even I have repaired an electrical switch problem in a Holden Monaro, while racing around Bathurst. That I did not crash, & actually finished second, destroys the idea of the indisputability of multitasking being impossible, unless I am a god of course.

Sure some drivers are more competent than others. Perhaps we should not be granting licences to the less competent. Like the lady who ran into the back of my parked car, shunting it through a brick fence, & half way through a homes front door. She was worried about her groceries on the back seat falling onto the baby beside them, & not attending to driving.

I did feel like telling her that running into a parked car was more potentially harmful for a baby, but feared she might become even more hysterical. Perhaps we could get your peer reviewed "scientists" to research & then ban the carriage of babies by lady drivers.

Like the charging of a drunk sleeping in their car with drunk driving, I'm afraid there is too much revenue raising potential here for me to trust your peer review or the integrity of our current crop of government funded scientists.