UK truckers caught drinking lager, texting on phones while driving

London, Jan 15 (ANI): Some truckers driving on Britain's busiest motorways have been caught drinking lager, texting simultaneously with a mobile phone in either hand, and watching DVDs from a laptop on the dashboard, while at the wheel.

The drivers were unaware that motorway officers, who used video cameras while in an unmarked lorry cab that put them at eye-level with truckers, were observing them.ne offender was found eating his dinner from a plate balanced on his steering wheel, while another was filmed with his feet up on the dashboard and one-swigged cans of lager on the move.

Since the operation was launched by the Central Motorway Police Group (CMPG) 12 months ago, dozens of lorry drivers have been caught flouting the law on motorways in the West Midlands, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcestershire.

Inspector Simon Westwood, of CMPG, said one of the most shocking cases was a lorry driver who was captured on camera texting simultaneously on two mobile phones - one in each hand.

"I couldn't do that if I was in a quiet room sitting in an armchair, so the thought of someone doing it while driving a fully-laden heavy goods vehicle is positively scary," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

"The problem with trucks having collisions is that when they do it tends to be fairly indistinguishable from Armageddon. It's not the number of incidents we get, it's the severity of them.

"We can be reduced to identifying people by their DNA. That's what we're trying to avoid.

"We don't want to see innocent people die on the roads and it also distracts us from the much more important job of locking up bad people - the murderers, rapists and drug dealers," he added. (ANI)