A senior road safety officer has praised our coverage and called for a way for the public to report people who use a phone while driving after more than a quarter of readers in a Daily Echo poll admitted using a hand-held device at the wheel.

On Wednesday, we highlighted the shocking number of drivers flouting the law against driving while using a hand-held mobile. See the gallery here.

By yesterday afternoon, 661 people had responded to a poll at bournemouthecho.co.uk Of those, 348 said they had never used a phone at the wheel, while 140 said they had only ever used one with a hands-free device.

Of those who had, 130 said they had both phoned and texted, 39 had made calls but not texted and four had texted but not phoned.

Rob Smith, road safety education officer at Dorset County Council, said the Echo’s coverage of the issue had been “excellent”.

He added: “I would certainly like to see some kind of reporting system where members of the public can phone and report people they see using a mobile while driving.”

He said it was difficult to explain why so many people thought it was acceptable to use a phone at the wheel.

“We just don’t know the answer to that. It’s possibly because using a mobile phone is a social norm.

“People do it all the time and this has spilled over into driving,” he said.

“It’s almost as though driving has become a distraction from using the mobile phone rather than the other way around. “We must change the view about the legitimacy of using mobiles.”

He said evidence showed that people looking at messages on their smart phones tended to spend 60 per cent of their time looking down and 40 per cent looking at the road.

Looking at a phone vastly reduces people’s reaction times.

Brian Austin, project manager for the No Excuse campaign: “We have a serious issue with this and it’s a big problem.

“We would encourage anyone to let us know if they see someone using a mobile phone while driving.

“Although it is virtually impossible to catch offenders straightaway, if we have the registration number, it will be logged and passed to local officers or Safer Neighbourhood Team. They will look into it because the likelihood is that they are serial offenders.”

Call Dorset police on 01202 222222 or 101.