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App Can Prevent Users From Texting While Driving
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Scientific American reports that while laws prohibit texting while driving in many states, many people still find it impossible to resist. Now researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are studying how software on a cell phone could analyze keystrokes to determine when that phone's user is distracted while composing and sending text messages and combined with GPS and other data, determine when a texter is behind the wheel and shut off texting functions automatically. Such a feature could take the form of a mobile app for any phone—independent of the manufacturer, operating system and wireless service provider. The researchers programmed a cell phone to log keystroke dynamics using a common operating system as a means of determining if an individual was texting while driving, in particular, 'keystroke entropy.' (PDF) when keys are struck at irregular intervals, as an indicator that the test subjects' attention is divided between texting and driving. 'The things that we are measuring, the data never needs to leave the person's phone,' says Mike Watkins, developer of the algorithm. 'But as a parent, you could require your child to have something like this on their cellphone as a way to protect them. Employers could use it as a way to mitigate their liability for accidents on work time. Even insurance companies could use it.'"
If it really does work, why not just put it on all call phones ant make it so that it can not be disabled.
Seriously, the number of people that I see looking at their crotch while driving is staggering.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
when keys are struck at irregular intervals, as an indicator that the test subjects' attention is divided between texting and driving.
So the way to get around that, if you are the teen forced to have this app, is to pay less attention on driving and focus on the texting.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
... if it's measuring keystroke entropy, wouldn't that mean the person is already starting to text? I've seen lots of solutions like this before (flash random letters/numbers, require parroting those letters/numbers, etc), and it's the same issue: you're responding to something someone is doing instead of proactively not allowing the person to do it in the first place. Essentially, the person could already be causing a problem on the road.
In other words, it's an interesting piece of academic work that I'm sure has applications elsewhere, however it's not going to solve the problem of texting behind the wheel.
So basically they are taking it upon themselves to ban you from texting in a public transport, or as a passenger. Many rides are bumpy enough and anyone carrying on a conversation might seem distracted enough for the app to trigger.
All this is going to do is force drivers to pay MORE attention to the phone as they don't want their message to be cancelled by the app.
The GPS built into my car has this capability already. What was the first thing I did when I got the car home? I took the damn thing apart and disabled the system that prevents you from using the GPS while driving. Why? Because I like to have passengers in my car. Its perfectly safe for a passenger to use the GPS all they want while I am driving. Hell they can even watch a DVD in the surround sound system in the car while I drive. I don't care. I'm not distracted by it, so what does it matter? (Though I will say in most jurisdictions just being able to see the movie is grounds for a moving violation, so be careful.)
Anyway, this software is likely to think that a passenger who is texting while talking to other people in the car are distracted drivers as well. Why don't we just give up on using technology to babysit people in these areas and start teaching people responsibility? If there is a way to disable texting while driving, someone can re enable it by rooting/jailbreaking their phone and modifying the software. What is the point in entering this arms race? People need to learn to make intelligent decisions, and not have intelligent decisions forced upon them.
Heuristics like this might be interesting on a theoretical level, but they won't be anywhere near as reliable as other approaches. I don't want my phone to have its functions disabled because I'm halfway through typing a text message and I sneeze or something. Phone integration with cars is only going to increase. Link cars with phones via Bluetooth and have the cars tell the phones when they are in motion.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The article says the error rate would be combined with GPS. Only erratic typing while driving or while riding public transit would result in a block.
"But as a parent, you could require your child to have something like this on their cellphone as a way to protect them..."
That's one reason why I ride the city bus: so that I can put next to no attention on the driving (apart from occasionally looking at my device's clock to see when I'm about to arrive at my stop) and nearly undivided attention on the task that I'm performing on my device.
I would never install an app that detected when I was driving and shut
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I imagine that if a measure like this is made mandatory, people who hold a monthly bus pass would have a case for an exemption.
Where are mod points when you need them? Mod parent insightful; this is one of the most stupid and, frankly, dangerous ideas I've heard in a while.
...while laws prohibit texting while driving in many states, many people still find it impossible to resist.
There are many stupid people.
Shouldn't that work against drunk texting as well?
Yours, Big Brother.
... to put a "parental-monitoring-software" on my computer, was a decade ago. Interestingly, they stopped to "require" it shortly after their computers stopped working and two external supporters could not find the reason why they had about 99% packetloss... Don't try to outsmart your children in any area, but expecially not phones and cars.
The GPS on my phone is almost always off. What are they going to do, force me to turn it on and waste my battery?
I use swype for "keyboard input", if you can call it that. They need an algorithm for that too.
Help I'm being chased by a big black pickup with no lights that just tried to run me off the road. What do you mean I need to pull over and place the vehicle in park to call 911?
So, what then, will it only disable texting if it not only sees (from the GPS) that the person is moving pretty fast AND they're typing differently (irregular intervals and such)... Cause to judge by just ONE of these would be unfair...
A person whose GPS indicates that they're moving BUT they're texting normally could be a passenger in a car, train, bus, etc.
A person whose GPS indicates they're still but typing irregularly could just be drunk or stupid.
Gotta take everything into consideration... I just feel bad for a retarded person who is a passenger in a car.... no texting for him.
"Employers could use it as a way to mitigate their liability for accidents on work time."
If it is their cellphone that they have provided, fine no problem.
If it is MY cellphone, they need to keep their fucking hands off of it.
Forget about teaching your children not to do it, we`ll just create another useless device to offset parenting skills and common sense. So tell me genius what keeps the kids from having a second phone and switch the sim card.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
"As an insurance company, you could require your customers to have something like this on their phone"
FTFY
Not good with its error rate. False positives be dammed, we are raising your rates!
How about a different solution? A device in the car, NFC, RFID, Bluetooth, etc, that handshakes with phones in the car, and which the driver has to answer to show which passenger is the driver. Then the app on the drivers phone disables texting until you are out of the car. Until someone with a phone present claims to be the driver, the car will not run.
Silence is a state of mime.
But goddamn enforce it! Law can be a great thing if it's used correctly, or if it's used at all. We have scores of freedoms we take for granted, because if we engaged in them we'd get kicked in the face or put in a cell. To limit freedoms by making things impossible is a road that ends short of breath and in a collective straitjacket. Auchtung!
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
It is pretty obvious from all of these comments so far, the ones decrying this software, and going on and on about how it wrong to deprive those on public transportation, blah blah blah, and how we should teach people personal responsibility, don't get it. If we could teach personal responsibility, there wouldn't be a need for this kind of software. Personally, I think we should get to drag the morons we catch texting while driving, screaming from their cars and beat the hell out of them using their phones as a blunt instrument; breaking the phone on their thick skull while beating some sense into their halfwit heads. At the very least, it would remove the threat they pose to those around them with their selfish behavior.
People that have been kidnapped have texted from the trunks of cars alerting others to what is going on. Imagine if those texts were blocked because you were in a moving vehicle and you were not typing normally?
"But this one goes to 11!"
There's a commercial company called Zoomsafer that has been doing work related to this. Their current software offerings focus on measuring use of devices in fleet contexts to help companies manage risk.
how about "F*#k you for snitching on me?" This violate my privacy, dammit "
Unless I'm navigating, I leave the GPS powered off. I suppose this software will require GPS always on. Not sure how that will work out.
Seems there would be a lot of collateral damage here. Also, what happens when you disable the GPS to save battery life? Will this app be broken/disabled or are we going to be required to enable the GPS at all times and worsen battery life for our own protection?
driving and other things ?? You've never had someone talking at you/to you while you were trying to text, or any number of "other things" that cause your attention to waver...say that PHAT princess that just walked by...
The texting and driving laws recently passed are useless grandstanding laws passed by politicos that are attention whores by definition. The generic driving laws cover driving and performing any actions which draws your attention away from the dangerous job of driving.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
how about completely ignoring what a person is doing, and only punish them if they are driving recklessly, regardless of the cause. We have laws against reckless driving already.
I've often wondered about this. Why don't we just have basic, universal laws against things like dangerous or inconsiderate driving?
After a while, I realised it's because these laws invariably leave a gray area right around the point that the people who we're trying to discourage from doing dumb things are actually doing those dumb things. Worse, those people are often in denial about their problem. Just look at the number of past Slashdot discussions where numerous people claim they can phone/text/whatever and drive, despite overwhelming evidence that only a tiny subset of the population are actually supertaskers. They don't think they're guilty of dangerous driving, so having a generic dangerous driving offence isn't going to affect them.
On the other hand, an objective standard, while inevitably imposing some limitation on the few people who really are good drivers and capable of doing more, leaves no room for the potentially dangerous people to escape. Text and drive, get caught, we crush your car. Simple. You didn't accidentally text, if you've got a driving licence you should know very well if the law says texting is illegal, and there are exactly zero emergency situations where a text would be more appropriate than, say, calling 911 (or whatever your local version is) unless you start getting into conspiracy theories that belong more in Hollywood movies than legislative debates. In short, there is no excuse, and having a black-and-white technical offence on the books makes prosecution an open and shut case.
My happy karma glasses see it this way. I know that I probably am safer on the road than the average driver, based on objective measures and peer review/training, and that I probably could handle my car at speeds some way above a lot of limits without compromising safety. However, I would surely complete my journeys even faster and in greater safety if the drivers at the extreme other end of the spectrum were consistently discouraged from doing dumb things or totally removed from the road. The impact they have through bad driving and the consequences of accidents surely causes a far greater delay on average than me driving say 20% slower than I'd ideally choose to do so that I stay within a legal limit.
It's always important to be wary of arguments that limiting someone's freedom is OK because it's also limiting the freedoms of hypothetical Bad People. However, in this case, the risk from bad drivers is not so much hypothetical as measured in thousands of human lives lost every year. On the other hand, the limitations on freedom for the rest of us are almost zero since no responsible driver would ever be texting and driving anyway, and obviously there is scope for making exceptions if, for example, a doctor certifies that a patient should be exempt because of a legitimate medical condition that means restricting their phone would affect them in unintended ways when they're not driving.
So after reflecting on this subject for a long time, I've concluded that technical road laws like banning texting while driving are a net win, as long as they are enforced impartially and regularly enough to actually be a deterrent.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
- a tree
- a truck
- an other car
- a 3 years old.
Privacy is terrorism.
Umm... I work for Sprint and we've already got a program that does this. It's called Drive First, and we've been offering it for a year now. I think it goes off the GPS but the program detects when the device is moving more than 10 mph and locks all functions on the phone.....
Or as we like to say "Willfully break the law, knowingly putting the lives of others at risk." Yup that covers it. But lets say it's impossible and pass a law, coz we don't have enough of those already and the all seem to work so well and the enforcement is so consistent and effective.
The person who is likely to text while driving will want to and try to text while driving even if this is forced on them.
Except they now adapt their behaviour. How? Obviously they know they have to text in a steady and consistent way. So they calm themselves and focus all of their attention on the phone. Hold it steady with the other hand.
This is like navigation systems that don't let you use them when the car is moving even though a passenger could be entering the info. I recently sent a message for my son who was driving. Perfectly safe even though the GPS would have detected motion. Maybe the app needs to read the status of the passenger airbag: if it is off due to no passenger, then block texting.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And there are a number of reasons someone can be distracted while typing. Let's not forget that this would apply equally to passengers, (actually, those in the backseats typically suffer even greater G forces).
No sir. It's not as if a community has grown around add and removing features outside of the manufacturer's specifications to Iphones
This is a horrible idea. This will encourage people to focus more attention on texting if they choose to text and drive.
If people did not think they could text and drive safely, they wouldn't. The people who believe this will simply spend more of their attention on the texting and less on the driving.
This is I think the biggest philosophical and cultural difference between part of western europe and the US. We have social security, because we like preventing health damage early when they don't cost so much. We like idea to stop crime not only by law vbut by disabling technological stuff or limiting them before they are abused, or even banning them (gun). We were on the forefront to ban cigarette in many places. It is all about prevention being less costly than repair.
The US seems to view prevention as an affront, an infringement on liberty, and would rather go repair mode : health care side rather than have a federal system you would rather thave people use private insurance, and if they can't use emergency room when it is too late or always very expansive. You would rather have gun freedom even if it menas 4 murder per 100000 person per year (the highest of any western country). You would rather practice absitence only rather than show sex stuff to your kid, and as per above you would rather have the freedom of breaking law and speed everywhere. the US is all about repair after dmaage has been done rather than prevention which is viewed in most case as freedom infrigement
I am not saying any of the system is better than the other, one compromise in direction of freedom , the other compromise in direction of having innocent damaged, and it is all a cultural decision which you would rather have. Personally I prefer prevention.
I agree with several of the posters above. It's should be more proactive. Like by using the accelerometer coupled with GPS (though GPS can be disabled) to determine whether the user was moving above a certain speed. If the speed detected is over "n" then silence all incoming text message alerts, disable vibration and lock the phone until the speed decreases past "n"
This shouldn't affect users of public transportation because why would you install the app if you took the bus all the time? Like the post says, it could help companies reduce liability.
Especially if the phone has real buttons. They can be operated without looking, so there is no "erratic" input caused by only taking glimpses at the phone.
Is because I'm now expected to negotiate Bluetooth synchronization and connection issues while operating a medium class machinery through traffic, trying to sound pleasant for the speech activated control system and holding a conversation without saying any key words. I mean, really? This technology saves lives? FFS! Can I just pick 2?! And I expect we'll be waiting a fair while before the road fatality statistics start recording that the minority of people who insist on operating within the law will be the ones most severely punished by it. (Note: Law states we can't touch our phone if the gear stick is out of park)
This is why I still use my Motorola StarTAC.
Why not switch-off the phone while driving?
Casteism
this simply raises the threshold for skillful texting and will then require that they focus all that much more on texting and be so much more distracted.
Granted, a texting driver or driver on the phone with a passenger is going to say that the passenger was using the phone, but in the case of a driver with no passengers we have to technology to place the blame appropriately.