In message k, at
10:40:43 on Tue, 3 Aug 2010, Stimpy remarked:
That raises something about which I've often wondered. My car has an iPod
socket so I sometimes use the iPod controls whilst driving. It's not a
phone so is using it specifically prohibited?

The prohibition on "using" a mobile phone would not apply to an iPod,
but *would* apply to the almost identical activity of accessing "iPod
functionality" within an iPhone.

Technology-specific legislation is almost always misguided, and in this
case the law is very specific to certain specified phone technologies.

Indeed. So let's assume it's not forbidden to use an iPod. It could,
however, be argued that using the iPd functionality on an iPhone is illegal.

Now consider the case of iPod Touch which shares a common user interface with
iPhone and, apart from the ability to make phone calls, is all but identical
to an iPhone.

Would using the iPod functionality on that device be illegal?

It's can of worms innit? :-)

Not really, because that was the exactly situation I described above!
(Sorry if it wasn't clear that I was thinking of the iPod Touch, but
that's the one with the most iPhone-alike interface).

It's not a can of worms at all (the situation is quite clear), but it is
(arguably) somewhere between an unintended consequence and the drafters
forgetting the golden rule about [not] being technology specific.

The worms only appear if (for example) you have a phone switched into
"flight mode" (so no calls are possible) being used for something else
(perhaps as a camera) while you are "at the wheel". Note that the law
also does not discriminate between the situations of bowling along a
motorway at 70mph versus being sat at (ObRail) a level crossing with the
gates closed, the gearbox in "park", while you snap a passing train.
--
Roland Perry