"Older Drivers Are The Worst"
A warning from police this week about using your phone behind the wheel... 
Young people might seem like they are glued to their phones these days but police say that behind the wheel P-platers resist using them because they do not want to accumulate demerit points.
Chief Inspector Phil Brooks told us on the Daily Drive show this week that "The worst offenders are the older drivers on our roads."
NSW Police statistics show that in 2016, 900 P-plater drivers were fined, compared with more than 38,000 fully licensed drivers.
Seven hundred and thirty five drivers were caught talking or texting in school zones. The penalties are four demerit points plus a fine of $325 or $433 in a school zone.
Inspector Brooks said “there really is no excuse for any of us to be manually handling a mobile phone while driving. Most of us are driving sophisticated cars with hands-free systems installed.”
If not, “a person can have a mobile phone in an approved cradle and used through the car's Bluetooth system.
"It just escapes me that people who have the right sort of car, are using their mobile phone up to their ear or looking down, sending a text," Inspector Brooks said.
If you need convincing as to how often Sydney metropolitan police catch offenders, you just need to read the numbers. In the last 12 months there has been over 4000 offenders in metro Sydney, 2962 in Parramatta, 1932 in Waterloo and 1188 in Surry Hills.
Only 900 were P-platers; the rest were fully licensed drivers across all ages.
"The younger drivers are acutely aware of the risks associated with using a mobile phone while on our roads," Inspector Brooks.
"It's the older drivers. Potentially it's them that are teaching the younger ones to drive and are the ones presenting the greatest risk upon our roads and that in turn is reflected in the road toll where sadly older drivers are over-represented in road fatality numbers."
Many of the offenders are people in school zones and while working.
The rules are -
- A driver must not hold a phone at all unless a vehicle is legally parked, or they are passing it to a passenger.
- You can only use the phone to make or receive calls, for audio or as a GPS.
- You can't have the phone on your lap, between your neck and shoulder or on any part of your body while talking.
- You can use Blue tooth, use an earpiece and use a cradle but don't hold the phone.
- Texting, video messaging, emailing, using facebook or tweeting are all prohibited.
