DRIVERS in Dorset are being urged to belt up and turn off their mobile phones while at the wheel this summer.

Road safety campaigners say more than 8,100 motorists have been caught behaving dangerously on the county’s roads so far this year.

Figures from the first five months of Dorset’s No Excuse driving campaign revealed that around one in three of those pulled over were either using their mobile phone or not wearing a seatbelt while driving.

In East, North and West Dorset and Purbeck, drivers failing to wear a seatbelt has been the most common offence dealt with by officers.

This was closely followed by people either using a mobile phone while driving or exceeding the speed limit in a 30mph zone.

A spokesman for the Dorset Road Safety Partnership said: “The message from both Dorset’s No Excuse campaign and the Government’s THINK! programme is stark - all phone calls and text messages distract from driving.

“Research shows you are four times more likely to crash if you use a mobile phone while driving.

“And not wearing a seatbelt makes you twice as likely to die if you’re in a crash.

“By taking just a few seconds to switch your mobile off and put your seatbelt on before you drive, you are dramatically reducing your chances of killing or seriously injuring yourself or other people.”

National research shows that drivers’ reaction times are up to 50 per cent slower when using a mobile at the wheel.

It also shows using a mobile while driving makes you four times more likely to crash.

Safety campaigners estimate nearly 300 lives would have been saved in 2007 if all car occupants had been wearing a seatbelt.

One in every four drivers or front seat passengers killed in collisions were not wearing a seat belt.

For rear seat passengers the figure is three in every four deaths.

Dorset County Council’s road safety manager, Robert Smith, said: “There is simply no excuse for being distracted by your mobile while driving – so switch it off.

“And you can double your and your passengers’ chances of surviving a crash by making sure everyone in both the front and back seats of the car has their belt on.”

The head of Dorset Police special operations, Chief Inspector Bob Nicholls, said: “Most drivers in Dorset have already made these two simple things a habit, helping support our aim to make it safer to drive on our roads.

“But it’s clear some drivers are still needlessly endangering lives by thinking the risks and the laws associated with mobile phones and seatbelts don’t apply to them, because we are catching them right across Dorset.

“As our teams are finding, the first response from people who are caught for these offences is so often: ‘I have no excuse'.”