What is proof of using a phone while driving?

I must not have got the memo when I cycled to work for 10 years because I rode with the assumption that even if I was 100% in the right with any traffic accident I was still a squishy human on a 12kg steel frame.

There's an exception for making a contactless payment, but not for fiddling with an app to make an order.

You won’t like it but chances are you will get prosecuted for phone use whilst driving. You can argue the toss with the police / magistrate and may or may not have success. There is no black and white here to say you’ll be ok or otherwise, but on the balance of probabilities I suspect it won’t go the way you want.

Am also wondering about this.

Sympathies Op, Sounds reasonable you were likely gaining evidence/protecting yourself with videoing/photo's, I'm interested to see what Agtlaw and others say about it.

In my own view you can't do much these days, if some one wants to do you, they'll likely succeed, appears to be no discretion, care for the lack of actual risk/recklessness/wrongdoing, consideration for reasonableness in most circumstances, or even if its a deviation from circumstance or goal the questionable lot in Lords/Commons tied to all manner of unsavory things and ineptness may have had in mind.

Hopefully if your stopped, essentially under attack, considering calling for help and collecting evidence, then a solution to prevent the points etc can be found.

Best of luck.

Holding is likely considered using, people have been done because officers thought they saw them using phone, and when told to check the phone records with telecoms Co, they didn't care as could have been about to make a call or listening to something on it.. That seems to be how it is these days.

Although I do hope to be proven wrong!

You can’t even touch a phone in a cradle, never mind holding the phone.

Simply holding a phone is not using it - the definition of using is now very broad, but not that broad. It requires using at least one of the phones functions, whether that be an actual voice call, or the camera, or an app, or looking at the internet or whatever.

However people tend not to pick up their phones and point them someone for no reason at all, so the court would be perfectly within its rights to conclude that she was using it, without any specific evidence of exactly what function she was using. The onus would in practice be in the OP to counter the assumption that she was doing something more than merely picking it up, which she would not be able to do without committing perjury given that she was using it to take a photograph.

You can:
…..
Using devices hands-free
“You can use devices with hands-free access, as long as you do not hold them at any time during usage. Hands-free access means using, for example:

a Bluetooth headset
voice command
a dashboard holder or mat
a windscreen mount
a built-in sat nav
The device must not block your view of the road and traffic ahead.”

How very nice of you. But you’re right, car drivers do seem to get away with murder.