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Software Holds Cell Phone Calls While Driving
An anonymous reader writes "Canadian company Aegis Mobility has developed software that detects if a cell phone is moving at 'car' speeds. If so, the software, DriveAssistT, will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over. Calls are not blocked entirely; callers will be notified that the person appears to be driving, but they can still leave an emergency voice mail, which will be sent through immediately."
Um how to they differentiate between driver and passenger?
I don't know if I'm this way because I'm a programmer, or if I'm a programmer because I'm this way, but I always feel the compulsion to invent cases where some new idea would be really terrible. Examples include car lights that come on automatically at night, and the case where you're trying to escape from a deaf serial killer. Well, this one's fairly easy: you're trying to surreptitiously dial 911 because you're being carjacked or kidnapped. Too bad for you!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Which would then defeat the purpose since drivers would now set it to passenger mode.
So when I'm on the train, subway, in the back of a taxi or in the passenger seat in a car I can't talk on the phone either? I believe I'd be going the same "car" speeds in all those situations. I don't think they thought this through at all. It would just piss me off more than anything.
Or maybe their professional engineers already thought about all the cases for their product before they released it...
"Optionally, users as passengers can choose to override DriveAssistâ and accept incoming calls and place outbound calls without interruption."
If you can opt-out then everyone who would usually take a call while driving would opt-out automatically (and continue taking calls whilst driving), thus rendering the device useless? I'm the type of person who doesn't take calls while driving, so theoretically this device would be good for me... except instead I simply use an absolutely tiny amount of self control and not-answer the phone when it rings. After it rings out it automatically diverts to my voicemail.
And the software is smart enough to decide if you are driving the car or are a passenger ?? What about if you are on a bus or train ?? Seems like someone being paranoid is going to drastically limit the usefulness of a cell phone in the near future. How does one keep this from happening ?
So what if I'm a passenger in the car? Or if I'm in the train or bus?
Your head a splode