MOTORISTS were fined more than £1.2m for using their mobile phones while driving in Merseyside in the past year.
Police ticketed more than 20,000 drivers for using handheld mobiles while in charge of their vehicles between April last year and September this year.
Even a driving instructor teaching a learner driver was among those hit with an £60 penalty and three points on their licence.
Merseyside Police warned unless they enforced the law, “the number of killed or seriously injured on the road could potentially increase”.
But because the cause of accidents while driving is not recorded, there is no data available for how many people may have perished on UK roads because of mobile use.
City leaders and police authority members said the numbers of offenders caught represented just “the tip of the iceberg” and suggested the true number of drivers putting lives at risk was much higher.
The problem is so great, the force’s central ticket office is “operating at maximum capacity due to the high level of enforcement”.
Figures show that between April last year and March this year, 14,386 people were caught using a handheld while driving – around one in every 100 people in Merseyside.
Despite police efforts to combat the problem, 6,323 drivers were caught in the five months between April and August this year, suggesting the overall tally for 2009/10 will be similar.
