Drivers using mobile phones behind higher number of deaths

DRIVERS using mobile phones have caused more road deaths in 2016 than any other year, it can be revealed.

DISTRACTION: Using your mobile phone while driving can bring costly consequences. Picture: Tom Huntley GLADV061212PHON

DRIVERS using mobile phones have caused more road deaths in 2016 than any other year, it can be revealed.

Mobile phones have been linked to the deaths of two women and two men on Queensland roads over the past 12 months, which is higher than other years.

The shock toll comes as new figures show police are nabbing male drivers on their phones at twice the rate of women.

The Courier-Mail revealed male drivers received 189,000 fines compared to 92,500 for women, in Queensland from 2006 to 2016.

Over the same period, 12 men and four women have died in crashes where mobile phones have been attributed as the cause.

In the past year, men aged 21-49 made up about half of all mobile phone fines.

RACQ head of technical and safety policy Steve Spalding said drivers using mobile phones had reached an "epidemic" and further enforcement was needed.

"It is clearly a problem that hasn't been adequately dealt with by education or enforcement," he said. "Far too many have been either killed, seriously injured or have their lives affected by drivers using their phone when they know they should not have been."

P-plater Meghan Hopper, who was 17 in 2012, was using Google Maps when she was involved in a crash that killed Taiwanese fruit-picker Chen-Chuan Yang, 25, and injured Kwan-Jun Wu, 30.

Five months later she was caught by police using Google Maps a second time. She received a 30-month suspended jail sentence.

Road Policing Command Superintendent Dale Pointon said the recorded number of fatal crashes linked to mobiles would only be "touching the tip of the iceberg".

In many cases police were unable to directly attribute mobile phone use.

"It's either got to be that they went to sleep or they were distracted," he said.