I won’t say “what is this world coming to?” I’ll say “what has this world come to?”

If it were the latter we would be in 100% agreement.

Found one (charges later dropped): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/774655.stm

It’s not completely clear; could be either. In the second case, the offense is the driving behavior and the eating/drinking is assumed ex post facto to have been the cause. In the first, the eating/drinking while drinking is itself an actionable offense.

Of course, in practice, the lines would tend to blur. People might be pulled over only for eating/drinking while driving and the officer would later say they had been driving recklessly. What could the driver do, say they were driving carefully? His/her word against the officer’s?

But still, there is a difference between the two laws in the way they would be written, and what is criminalized. There is also at least a theoretical difference in how broadly they would be applied. In practice, of course, the difference may or may not be blurred.

You don’t have to have caused any accident, or actually done anything dangerous. The police consider eating while driving to be dangerous per se.

There was a case about 5 years back that I can’t find a reference to at the moment where somebody was ticketed for eating an apple in stationary traffic… with the handbrake on. There was another one involving a Kit Kat under similar circumstances.

It is not a ban on driving while eating. In other words (at least, if I understand the way the law is written), no one is arrested for merely driving while eating, as they would be if there were a law against it. It appears from the links to be applied ex post facto, after an accident or an incident in which a person is driving bizarrely or in a way that gains attention because it seems reckless in some way. Then, if it is determined that the person was eating leading up to the accident or the incident, that is deemed to be careless driving under the law. But eating while driving is not actually criminalized in and of itself.

I understand that the effect is not enormously different. But it still is somewhat different; not just semantics.

So although there is no act of Parliament specifically banning it, it has been administratively banned by deeming it to constitute something that Parliament has expressly banned.

The difference is mere semantics, rather like CO2 being deemed to be an air pollutant by the EPA so that they can regulate it.

That’s different than an outright ban on eating/drinking while driving.

Eating while driving in the UK links:

http://www.nopenaltypoints.co.uk/drinking-eating-while-driving.html

http://www.motordefenceteam.co.uk/offence-guide/careless-driving.htm

It is prosecuted as either careless driving or driving without due care and attention.

I know I’ve more than once gone to pick up a female friend, drunk, late at night; on the phone with her the whole way.

It’s already illegal to drive recklessly; can’t they just enforce the bloody law?