Do you not always have the right to demand a jury trial?
Update - dang, no you don’t… that’s utterly ridiculous. The right to a trial by jury is supposed to be one of the foundations of common law. I’ve never had a traffic violation here (I did when I lived in the US where I was offered a jury, but there was a huge jury fee so I didn’t choose it)
Do any of the contactless road/bridge tolls accept NFC?
Contactless is by definition an application of NFC, NFC is the general category of air interface (near field communication, as opposed to, say, vicinity RFID).
P.S. if you mean mobile wallets, I don’t think so as I thought the tolls were offline and mobile wallets are online-only.
And hybrid and electric cars 
No. Minor offences, where the maximum fine is £5000 and/or maximum sentence is 6 months are only heard in Magistrates’ Courts. Juries only sit in Crown Courts. Appeals aren’t heard by a jury either.
The ‘facts’ around the article are pretty clear cut. If a McDonald’s Drive Thru hasn’t already been found to be a road as defined by the Road Traffic Act in a Court, going by what is already deemed to be a road (driveways on private hotel estates, highways airside in an airport, Tesco’s car park) I’d say the Drive Thru would absolutely be found to be a road, although if that specific situation has never been argued in court I could be proved wrong.
Using a mobile phone whilst driving (on a road) is illegal. This includes texting, and using apps – essentially touching the screen or a button to do anything is use. The driver is even ‘in control’ of a vehicle, for other offences, if they are sitting in the driving seat with the ignition off and the handbrake applied. Getting a ticket in those circumstances is pretty extreme, but essentially possible.
The discussion is really whether any offence should or would be on the public interest to prosecute, not on already-established facts such as what defines a road etc.
Well:
I think the police could find such a case very interesting. It’s easy money, and makes them look good (they can show they’re cracking down on mobile use while driving, without having to actually catch anyone driving with their phone, which is much harder).
It’s kind of like the euphemistically-named ‘safety’ cameras that have been shown to have little effect on road safety, are well-accepted by the public and are a lucrative income source.
Well we don’t have to press any buttons or touch the screen at all, just wave a locked android phone (with android pay set up) at the card reader and it works.
It’s actually easier to grab my phone out the centre console than get the wallet out of my back pocket and get a card out to pay.
It’s not the type of payment (Google/Android/Apple), it’s the fact that you’re using a mobile device that’s the issue.
Section 192 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 sets down that a ‘road’ means ‘any highway and any other road to which the public have access and includes bridges over which a road passes’.
A car park is not a road - Clarke v Kato [1998]. However, it is a public place within S192 and so otherwise included.
Multi storey car parks, hospital car parks and pub car parks during licensing hours have been held to be public places. McDonald’s car park and drive thru are public places.
Regulation 110 of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 creates a prohibition on the use of mobile telephones in motor vehicles in certain circumstances.
In summary:
In summary, you’re unlikely to get reported for this offence under these circumstances. Police tend to take a pragmatic view on these sorts of things.
I know of nobody being reported for this offence in these circumstances. I do, however, know of someone nicked for drink driving whilst stationary at a McDonald’s Drive Thru.
Should police “crack down” on mobile phone use whilst driving at Drive Thrus? Or would their efforts be better focussed on targeting those motorists who present a very real and serious risk to road safety?
I don’t think action, on those at a Drive Thru, would be good for the police. On the contrary once the press gets a whiff of that story! The police aren’t looking for “easy money”, the fine doesn’t go to the police either.