The Case For a Safer Smartphone

itwbennett writes: "According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, people who text and drive increase their chances of 'safety-critical events' by a multiple of 23.2. And new research is constantly rolling out, showing the same thing: 'We can't handle the visual, manual, and cognitive commitment of using a phone while driving,' writes blogger Kevin Purdy. What's needed, Purdy suggests, isn't more laws that will go ignored, but phones that know enough to stop giving us the distractions we ask them for: 'I think the next good phone, the next phone that makes some variant of the claim that it "Fits the way you live," needs to know that we don't know what is good for us when it comes to driving. We want to be entertained and shown new things while doing the often mundane or stressful task of driving. More specifically, those phones should know when we are driving, quiet or otherwise obscure updates from most apps, and be able to offer their most basic functions without needing to turn on a screen or type a single letter.'"

Comments

If you can learn to put a beer down while driving,

[geekmux]

...you can learn to put a fucking cell phone down.

We don't need smarter apps to tell us to ignore a phone while driving.

We don't need smarter six-packs. Or smarter makeup. Or smarter food containers. All of these things should not be mixed while steering a ton of steel down the freeway.

We we need are smarter drivers on the road who fucking know better.

And I agree. We don't need more laws. What we need is more real consequences like jail time for offenders so that they may wise up. Clearly current methods are not working, and Darwin award winners in this case take innocent lives with them.

Re:If you can learn to put a beer down while drivi

[currently_awake]

We need to teach rational thinking in school. Stop indoctrinating passive consumers and start training people to THINK about their environment. Of course then people would start questioning those in power, and that isn't wanted.

Re:Human Nature?

[davester666]

not this stupid argument again.

the passengers have a vested interest in not distracting the driver. and in general, they don't. and they also tend to be looking around, and are likely to alert the driver when they notice a pedestrian in front of the car, or the car is drifting onto the shoulder or into the car in the next lane.

you can tell that it's happening when you are in the car, and you can't over the phone [or you just don't care].