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LAST MONTH THE Transport Minister completely prohibited the practice of texting while driving.
Legislation had already outlined that drivers couldn’t operate a phone but Leo Varadkar said the law was not 100 per cent clear on whether it applied to sending a text or searching the web while the phone was in a cradle.
Fine Gael TD Andrew Doyle asked Minister Varadkar if taxi drivers who received automatic route information updates on navigation systems through their phones were breaking the law.
He wanted the Minister to “clarify for taxi drivers who enter their destination to their satellite navigation software on their smartphones, whether the automatic data updates for route information received during their journey is prohibited as being data access while driving under the new legislation”.
The Transport Minister replied that the new regulations make it an offence to send or read a text message from a mobile phone while driving. He added:
“These regulations apply to mobile phones which are not being held, i.e. to hands-free devices. A text message in these regulations includes an SMS or MMS message, or an email.
The automatic data updates from satellite navigation software operates over the internet, therefore it is neither SMS- nor MMS-based.
“Email operates over the internet. As the Regulation specify email, which does operate over the internet, this implies that non-email communication received via the internet is not covered by the regulations.”
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Some Munster fans are caught up in this and may miss the match later.
@Tony Stack: I was caught in it, was some joke, Queuing up since 5 for the 7:30 flight to shannon, bus went on fire right outside the door, they decided to evacuated people already gone through and rescan them again causing a backlog, told at around 8 the flight was cancelled, no organisation or anything if anything else happens we were all screwed, Toulon fans flights cancelled too, no home for me now either this Easter.
@Paul Friday Shannon: I was on a plane waiting to taxi out. After about two hours the airport made the crew kick us out as we needed to go through security before we could take off. So that put us just outside arrivals with the line going from there to the departures. Ten people wide and a few hundred meters long.
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