whats the rule with a touchscreen sat nav and bluetooth phone?

swoofer

I have a garmin sat nav with bluetooth and fm radio. I can use phone through car speakers and only need to touch the sat nav screen on the dash. I got it for work sometime ago and retired now but use it as gizmo for opening automatic gates.

All I do is press phone, calls directory, last dialled, press number. All very easy but I read today on the indo you can be done for touching the sceen on a phone while driving but does it apply sat navs??

bmstuff

Hard to tell. A fella the other day got stopped by the gardai after he was caught scratching his ear.
The gard would not believe him and told him he was holdigng his phone. Even though his phone was n the craddle and his car has bluetooth.

CiniO

AFAIK it's illegal to hold your phone when driving, and it's illegal to text or email when driving.
Maybe something else, but so far nothing includes what you are talking about.

swoofer

thanks both, I can have phone in boot so they cant say I was touching phone!!

slimjimmc

swoofer wrote: »

I have a garmin sat nav with bluetooth and fm radio. I can use phone through car speakers and only need to touch the sat nav screen on the dash. I got it for work sometime ago and retired now but use it as gizmo for opening automatic gates.

All I do is press phone, calls directory, last dialled, press number. All very easy but I read today on the indo you can be done for touching the sceen on a phone while driving but does it apply sat navs??

There is currently no specific offence of operating a sat nav while driving. The Minister has the authority to introduce regulations to ban it but hasn't done this (yet). However, if using a sat nav affects your driving enough it could result you may being charged with careless or even dangerous driving.

SI 178/2014 only prohibits reading or sending SMS messages from a mobile phone wile driving, no mention of Sat Navs or any other device.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/pdf/2014/en.si.2014.0178.pdf