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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."
Seems like exactly the same as turning the phone off. I smell a patent!
Per subject..
... and let the machine get it.
Nobody rides a train at car speeds, am I right?
The "I'm in the back of an unmarked white van" patch has already been released.
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.
No, wrong, voice mail is more of a distraction than receiving text messages. Just don't enable the ability to respond to the text message until the car comes to a stop.
But what about passengers?
Should go over well with friends and family.
Car passengers don't get to make phone calls either?
But more importantly, what is Iron Man going to do to call off missiles being shot at him now?
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
Won't someone please think of the passengers?
From here
but don't let that get into your 2 minutes of hate.
Good thing there's a passenger mode and you can basically opt out. I have hands free in the car and I find it useful to take the occasional call, so I wouldn't use this in a car.
Motorbikes are different. I'd definitely use something like this eliminate the distraction of the phone ringing or buzzing when riding.
I don't therefore I'm not.
This brings to mind the "feature" in most navigation systems where most functionality is disabled while driving. Terrible idea, as it winds up being more distracting trying to work around it.
Case in point, the Nissan/Infiniti navi/entertainment stuff in my sister-in-law's car. It disables certain "more complex" functions when moving. One of the disabled features is browsing for a song to play from a CF card. Result: you spend more time playing with the thing trying to find the song you were looking for, which means the "safety feature" has in fact created an additional distraction.
The time I had to pull off the freeway in a "not-so-nice" area to reprogram my navigation system (had accidentally selected avoid freeways without realizing it) is another simple example of the dangers of such nannyware. Had to do this because the Nav thought it would be too dangerous for me to push "Dest", and then "Previous Destination", and then toggle the "Freeway" checkbox.
The next day a $2.50 Radio Shack switch was installed to disable the vehicle speed sensor feed wire. :D More modern navs can't be worked around in this fashion, but you can often scour torrent sites for "patches" to navigation DVDs to work around the speed-disable "feature". Some companies even make a living at it by building add on modules to the system itself, e.g. http://www.coastaletech.com/gmx320.htm. It's a requirement for any vehicle I purchase from here on out that any such "nanny features" be capable of being disabled.
No one wants this. I wouldn't touch a phone with it. Good luck with that.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
Yes, the vast majority think they are above average drivers. They think _they_ are special. They can handle it, it won't distract them. It's pretty much the same arguments drunk drivers use.
Of course many laws trying to fix the cell phone and drive problem are delusional too. They allow hands free phones, as if multiple studies haven't found that it's about as bad as a hand held phone while driving.
that must be one MOTHERFUCKING loud and obnoxious ring tone to hear it over the wind and bike flying down the highway :P
Perfect for lunch or movies :)
Of course they have. You can TURN IT OFF if you're a passenger.
RTFA FFS.
Nope. Common misconception and just plain wrong
The reactions of drivers on phone calls are worse than the reactions of drunk drivers. Check those links, or use google, you'll find a mass of studies supporting this.
So if you are someone who thinks it's okay to drive while on the phone, please turn in you license and refrain from driving at all.
I don't therefore I'm not.
You haven't seen his motor bike!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Actually NYC is screwed up compared to many U.S. cities. Since they built the very first subways in the US, and a lot of other cities learned from their mistakes. Washington DC for example, has really good public transit, and the parts I've seen of Atlanta, while a pretty limited sample around the airport and convention centers and hotels, look very good too. New York isn't nearly as bad as most US tourists think, but having the terminals underground to give a smaller surface footprint makes it harder for the police to keep problems out - there's places that have solidly licked that particular problem just by putting the turnstyle level above ground with plenty of glass around it, and others that feel they can afford enough beat cops to really watch the entrances.
Who is John Cabal?
I hear that a freeway describes exactly what you are talking about,
The troll with karma.
Their have been TV shows where people tested cell phone subjects, i.e. driving in a parking with cones laid out, or at a track, and pretty frequently, people using cell phones have reaction times similar to people who are legally drunk, and make similar numbers and types of mistakes. I've even seen examples where the reporter or host has told a driver, "What you've just done compares to a person who's driving with a BAQ of about 0.18 or 0.22." So don't be too sure drunk driving is a much bigger problem. It might just be that the drunk is drunk the whole journey, and the cell phone user is only an increased risk while they are actually on the phone, and most calls don't last the whole trip.
Who is John Cabal?
Nearly every time I see someone driving outlandishly stupid on the road, they're using a cell phone. However, there are more stupid things that you can do while driving that are more distracting than a cell phone: changing the radio, eating, drinking, looking for something, reading directions. None of these things are illegal, merely discouraged.
Outlawing cell phone use while driving is futile; there are always ways to get around it, e.g., hands-free links. If there is no way to enforce a law, it shouldn't be a law in the first place.
I think if we stopped trying to ban it and merely strongly recommended not using cell phones while driving, we would see an effective drop in the number of people using cell phones while driving. Seat belts, for instance, weren't enforced until this past decade (at least in my state). However, advertising, education, and signs asking you to buckle up made it so the vast majority did buckle up. Was it illegal to drive without a seat belt on? No. Was it safe? Yes, so most people did it. Why can't we approach the cellphone problem like we approached the seat belt problem? Why are we so gungho about laws and declaring everything unsatisfactory illegal nowadays?
That's a bit of an uninformed conclusion. Just because you can imagine a bunch of cases where such a feature is not a good idea, doesn't mean that there aren't cases where it would solve a lot of problems. If your job involved lots of short drives between destinations then it could be really useful. As soon as you start moving your phone won't interrupt you, as soon as you stop it lets you know about the calls you missed, and in the meantime it let the people trying to contact you know what's going on.
If you took your blinkers off you might realize that this is a feature that will be useful for some people, who will purchase it, and not so much for others, who won't purchase it. It's not a hard thing to get your hear around if you try. Nobodies going to purchase it and then try and figure out a way of defeating it.
If Slashdot was a crowded room, and someone were to come into the room and ask "Who owns the red car parked out the front", the answer "oh yeah, that's mine" would be lost amongst the noise of everyone else replying "It's not mine. I can't imagine why you'd think it was mine. How dare you suggest that I left a red car parked out the front".
...to sit in traffic because some bozo stopped at a green light so they can finish their text message because their phone wont work once they start moving.
I would rather people who actually need this just go ahead and wreck their car. It would be the fastest way for them to learn how to drive and not use a damn phone for their 20 minute commute. More importantly, it would keep them off the road for a couple hours until they get a rental. Probably cheaper in the long run over paying for this service.
Nah, I do buy it. I'm not stupid enough to say, "Hey, that research which points to a truth I personally find uncomfortable must be funded by people I disagree with," just because I find it uncomfortable.
There are related studies that have looked at the difference in brain activity between people involved in a conversation and people concentrating on other visual stimuli that show that important motor skills can suffer when people are chatting.
There are also studies that show that smoking pot is more of a danger than alcohol because drunks have excellent reaction times but their reactions are poorly controlled. Pot heads do everything more slowly and appear more careful, but as soon as something unexpected happens, they tend to go "Wow, I'm freaking out" and then smash.
Like most things in life there is a counter intuitive element to road safety. It's not that the alcohol related laws are too strict, it's just that the laws relating to mobile phones need to be stricter and policed a lot better. Uncomfortable and unpopular for some, but it appears to be true given that most of the evidence supports it.
I don't therefore I'm not.
This is slashdot. You don't have a girlfriend.
Nope. Common misconception and just plain wrong
The reactions of drivers on phone calls are worse than the reactions of drunk drivers. Check those links, or use google, you'll find a mass of studies supporting this.
So if you are someone who thinks it's okay to drive while on the phone, please turn in you license and refrain from driving at all.
Did you even read the links you linked to?
From your first link:
"In the US in 2002, alcohol was a factor in 41 per cent of all fatal traffic accidents and in 6 per cent of all accidents. Data collected by 20 state highway authorities showed mobile phones were a factor in an estimated one-half of 1 per cent of all crashes and these crashes were more likely to be minor, rear-end collisions."
AND
"Mobiles are also not the most common or significant distraction for drivers. Only last month, Monash University's accident research centre found "interacting" with a car stereo is more distracting than using a hands-free mobile phone. An American study that analysed more than 32,000 traffic accidents caused by various driver distractions found mobile phones contributed to less than 2 per cent of accidents, while an outside object, person or event contributed to more than 29 per cent. Adjusting the radio or CD player contributed to more than 11 per cent of accidents."
I think the above says it all.
Shit happens and it's usually caused by assholes
This seems like a feature that they're planning on selling to parents. Otherwise, if you can't remember to turn off your phone before getting in a car, what are the chances that you'll remember to turn off the cell lock when getting on a train, bus, or plane? This sounds exactly like the kind of Won't-Somebody-Please-Think-of-the-children that will lead to some expensive new gadget that simply annoys teenagers. It also, of course, gives them an all-new reason why they're not answering you when you call.
If you're an adult and you actually need this... LEARN TO IGNORE YOUR CALLS. Trust me, it's possible. People in Los Angeles have been masters of this for 40 years.
I really wish they'd create something that would turn Cellphones back on at the end of movies. I can't tell you how often I've gone for a day or two without being reachable simply because I was trying to scrub the memory of The Santa Clause 3 out of my brain.
The ______ Agenda
anyone that CAN'T drive while talking on the phone should turn in their licence or refrain from driving at all.
Same goes for drunk driving.
I am perfectly capable of driving while drunk. The chance of killing myself or someone else in a crash increases from a tiny fraction of a percent when sober to a larger fraction of a percent when drunk. Anyone CAN drive drunk without killing anyone 99+ percent of the time.
Comparing drunk driving to driving with a cell phone is even more ridiculous
What, are you doing a Steven Colbert impression? You don't look stuff up in books because books are just filled with worthless facts? You don't use your brain, you just go with whatever your gut says?
Scientific research finds that drivers on cellphones have WORSE reaction times than criminally-drunk drivers:
Alcohol merely slows brain processing and reaction times. Using a cellphone entirely diverts higher brain functions, the task of driving is passed off to the brain's lower level autopilot systems. The brain's higher awareness systems are focused on the cellphone, unexpected events on the road outside may go completely unnoticed, and when they are noticed it takes longer to do so, and it takes the higher brain systems a moment to drop what they were doing and to switch over to processing the outside event, and then to first come up with the appropriate reaction. Drinking SLOWS reaction times to an unexpected event by a fraction of a second, but ususing a cellphone DELAYS reaction time to unexpected events by an even LARGER fraction of a second.
Autopilot-driving is sufficient to drive a car 99 percent of the time. Disasters generally occur when someone has a delayed or inappropriate reaction to some unexpected event, like a child running out into the road or someone cutting you off, or the car in front of you breaking. You can't just 'turn off your phone' after some other driver unexpectedly swerves into your lane. Well you CAN, but that is pointlessly too late to turn the cellphone off. You've already lost the reaction time and already hit someone.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The issue isn't that people use cell phones on the road. The issue is that they're using a cell phone while on a section of road that needs their full attention. I can think of plenty of times when talking on my cell phone while driving isn't remotely dangerous. For instance, I might be driving on a stretch of interstate for 50 miles or so where I am not going through any major towns, and am not changing highways etc. In such an instance, talking on the cell phone is not such a distraction that you can't drive. In fact, it often helps keep you awake, as you really don't have much to do when cruise control is on and there's no one around.
Where it is dangerous is when you're driving around a city, or on crowded highways where you will likely have to be changing lanes and getting off at exits. In fact, I've been on the phone many times coming back from a concert or somewhere else that is a sizable distance away, where I tell whoever I'm talking to that I'll call them back in a bit, as I'm nearing home, and need to pay attention to the road again. It's just too difficult to try and pay attention to someone when you need to be watching everything around you. When you're talking to someone in the car, it can be as distracting as well, but normally, as they're aware of their surroundings, they know when not to talk, and what you can and can't talk about. Of course, having your hands free also helps, as holding a phone is one more thing to distract you.
I think laws outlawing all talking on the phone while driving are just too extreme. There are situations where it is appropriate, and situations where it isn't. Maybe it should just be enforced like seat belt laws (normally) are enforced. You won't be pulled over for talking on one, but if you are pulled over for something else (even if it was something minor that you normally wouldn't get a ticket for, but just a warning), and are talking on a cell phone, an additional fine will be added. I think this is fair, although it will likely be abused by law enforcement (although not as bad as the other way would be). An outright ban on cell phones just pisses people off who are legitimately safe when using their phones, and causes people who are on their phones to pay even less attention to the road, as they're now talking on the phone while looking out for cops, taking even more of their concentration.
Phil
I really wish they'd create something that would turn Cellphones back on at the end of movies.
Sounds like you need to buy an Android phone and put Locale on it. As a bonus, it will turn the phone's ringer off for you when you get there!
Biker friend of mine had auto-answer on for a while on his in-helmet mike and speaker. I remember another friend complaining that he called him, it auto-picked up, and all friend 2 could hear was friend 1 going "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"! Friend 1 didn't even realise friend 2 was on the phone.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Their have been TV shows
Whose?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
In Canada they are going to outlaw passengers in cars.
It is a great way to cut down on the number of people injured during a traffic accident! No more 2 car accidents with 3+ injured parties!!!