Distracted Driving: All Lip Service With No Legit Solution

redletterdave writes: "April was National Distracted Driving Awareness Month. Unfortunately, the recognition of this month for distracted driving was a hollow gesture — just like the half-hearted attempts at developing apps that prevent cell phone use while driving. After a week of trying to find an app that prevents me from all cell phone use from behind the wheel entirely, I've given up. The Distracted Driving Foundation lists about 25 apps on its website — there are a few more on Apple's App Store — but I couldn't find a single one that was easy to use. Most were either defunct, required onerous sign-up processes, asked for subscription plans, or simply didn't work as advertised."

Comments

There is this button.

[Maxo-Texas]

You press and hold it and the phone turns off.

It's free.

Re:There is this button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or folks get over the bug-a-boo that is 'distracted driving' as being the fault of cell phones.

Hi, I live in Kansas City, Missouri.

Are you an adult? AKA at least 18 years old?

You're allowed to ride your bicycle without a helmet.

You're also allowed to text, make phone calls, do whatever on your whatever in your whatever while you go from wherever to wherever.

You're also allowed to be pulled over for reckless driving if you're doing any of these things, or eating a burger in one hand and drinking a big-gulp in the other, or spending more time screaming over your shoulder at your kids in the back seat tha paying attention to the road.

But if you're just cruising down a mostly empty road and checking asking what you were supposed to pick up at Burger King? Have a nice day.

But if, heaven help you, you get in an accident and they prove you were on your cell phone? Good luck not being found at fault.

I'd rather get busted if I fuck up, and be able to be pulled over if I'm unsafe in the eyes of the officer, than have a zero-tolerance nanny policy akin to getting expelled from high school because a kitchen knife fell out of a box you were moving over the weekend and got stuck in your pickup truck bed and you didn't notice it.

Re:There is this button.

[JustinOpinion]

You're of course correct. (As are the many other replies that amount to: "Just don't use the phone while driving, dummy!")

However, it's worth keeping in mind how the human mind works; in particular its limitations. Our minds and behaviours are inherently flawed. Part of being a smart and responsible person is not just modulating your behaviour, but also designing your life so as to elicit the right kinds of outcomes. A simple example is putting an item that you want to bring with you tomorrow by the door. You could "Just remember to grab it when you leave tomorrow morning!", but you're accounting for your own fallible memory by putting it by the door while you're thinking of it. Another example would be a person who puts a tempting snack on an inaccessible shelf: they buy the snack because they want to have a treat sometimes, but they purposefully make it slightly inconvenient for themselves to eat the snack, so that they don't just reflexively eat it all the time. It's part of a strategy to invoke more rational thinking, rather than just let your immediate impulses win.

There are many more examples of such behaviour. Obviously it's "better" to simply have infinite willpower and rationality; but for people who do not (and if we're being honest, this describes all of us; though our individual temptations and biases are different), it can be useful to design your life to account for your fallibility.

So, in principle a cellphone app that disables the phone while driving can be useful. It's for people who recognize that it's a really bad idea to use your phone while driving, and yet are so addicted to their phone that they cannot avoid answering it when it rings. (Or are so addicted to status updates that they will absentmindedly check when bored, even if they are driving!) These people may also not have the discipline (or memory) to (for instance) always put the phone in the trunk before getting behind the wheel. For those people, such an app can be useful.

Having said all that, I think it's unrealistic to expect an app to properly differentiate between the situations where you would want the phone disabled (while driving) and those where you don't (parked, passenger in a car, etc.). So I think the question-poster should instead investigate other ways to modulate their own behaviour (e.g. put a holder in the car, in a very visible location, that says "PHONE BATTERY GOES HERE", and always pull out the battery before turning on the car).

Re:There is this button.

[CityZen]

And your teenage driver will certainly follow this advice, just like he/she followed every other piece of useful advice you have offered.

Re:There is this button.

[mark-t]

The reality is that we live in a world of people who either cannot or will not objectively decide that an action might be unsafe for them at any given instant, and, regrettably, many of these so-called adults have drivers' licenses. What you suggest is ideal, but in a world that has more than enough of its share of people who are either too lazy or too immature to be bothered with trying to behave responsibly, even if they might be endangering themselves in the process, not catering to the lowest common denominator will only result in a greater number of deaths

Re:There is this button.

[rnturn]

``You're allowed to ride your bicycle without a helmet. You're also allowed to text, make phone calls, do whatever on your whatever in your whatever while you go from wherever to wherever.''

If I ride my bike without a helmet I am the one who is at risk. If I'm stupid enough to be screwing around with a cellphone while I'm driving, I'm putting everyone in the car with me at risk along with everyone unlucky enough to be within range of the car as it travels along while I'm no longer fully in control of it.

Put your phone away while you're driving and stop spouting BS that you have some Constitutional right to text while you drive.

Re:There is this button.

[crazyvas]

Stop spinning this as a personal responsibility/freedom issue. That's complete BS. The real issue at stake is the freedom of other people to exist, and to exist without injury caused by your stupidity.

I'd rather you get busted if you fuck up too, but instead, what will likely happen when you fuck up is, someone will lose an arm or leg...or a life. Stop thinking about whether you will be "found at fault," and start thinking about someone losing their life or limb, because that is the consequence of relevance here.

There's an app for that?

[jdavidb]

After a week of trying to find an app that prevents me from all cell phone use from behind the wheel entirely

Maybe my perspective is limited because I still have a dumb phone, but it strikes me that maybe the problem is that you are trying to solve this problem with the wrong tool.

Re:There's an app for that?

[Jason Levine]

Exactly! If you use the right tool, you can solve this instantly. Take a hammer and use it on your phone. Then you won't be able to use it while driving. What's that you say? You can't use it when you're not driving either now? That's a bug that we hope to have fixed in Hammer 2.0.

Re:There's an app for that?

[CheshireDragon]

Or simply practice restraint/self control.

Re:There's an app for that?

[LookIntoTheFuture]

After a week of trying to find an app that prevents me from all cell phone use from behind the wheel entirely

Maybe my perspective is limited because I still have a dumb phone, but it strikes me that maybe the problem is that you are trying to solve this problem with the wrong tool.

I would say that if a person cannot figure out the solution on their own, they are a tool.

Difficult to find apps

[sweBers]

I spent my whole drive to work looking for apps to prevent me from using my phone. I gave up after parking my car.

This requires an App????

[CrimsonAvenger]

Seriously, does it really require an app to either:

A) Not answer?

B) Turn the phone off?

Well, if you can't handle either of the above, I suggest putting your phone in the trunk.

And if that doesn't work, set the phone on the ground just behind one tire of your car, get in the car, and back up ten feet....

This is almost tautological

[pthisis]

Either:
1) You want to use the phone while driving, in which case you're not going to use such an app; or
2) You don't want to use the phone while driving, in which case you can simply not use the phone.

Re:User error?

[93 Escort Wagon]

That'll never work. Clearly we need a technological solution!

More seriously... why do you need to turn the phone off? If it rings or buzzes while you're driving, DONT PICK UP THE DAMN THING.

My app

[sandytaru]

It's called the iPurse. I keep my phone inside it when I'm in the vehicle. As long as you don't undo the zipper, the cell phone cannot be used while driving. They also have more masculine variations known as the iManBag that even have special slots to hold the phone.

Re:My app

[sandytaru]

The downside of the PantsPockets(TM) is that you can still feel the tempting vibrations of the phone when it rings. The iManBag can be safely stored on the seat beside you, eliminating the temptation. Additionally, most PantsPockets(TM) do not come with a closure such as a snap or zipper.

Re:My app

[I'm New Around Here]

Lady, leave you man's balls alone. Stop torturing the guy by squeezing them while he's sleeping.

For the love of god, find some other way to make him stop snoring.

wow that's a lot of apps

[rubycodez]

I'll have to check those out on the drive home

Re:I farted

[koreanbabykilla]

Nice FP EF. That being said, if the submitter wants to pay me to come slap the fucking phone out of his hand when he tries to use it while driving, my services are available for a fee. If you cant just not use the phone while driving w/o an app enforcing it, you have bigger problems than just driving while distracted.

Re:If you need an app to stop using your phone...

[Austerity Empowers]

you're doing it wrong

Captcha: puberty

Pretty much everyone does that wrong.

Re:Acceleromiters in the devices can shut them

[lister king of smeg]

Off if in a moving vehicle.

sucks to be a passenger then.

Re:Ban Women

[CanHasDIY]

Ban women passengers if you want to increase safety. I've ran 3 red lights either arguing with or being baffled or insulted by yapping women passengers.

Yea, that was totally the female passenger's fault, not the fault of the moron behind the wheel... Good luck convincing a judge of that when you inevitably injure/kill someone because of your inattention.

My advice - surrender your license and pick up a bus schedule, if you find driving to be too difficult to focus your attention on.

Re:I farted

[CheshireDragon]

If you cant just not use the phone while driving w/o an app enforcing it, you have bigger problems than just driving while distracted.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I don't know what is so important what someone said you are willing to get seriously injured or die for.

Not a huge surprise...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It doesn't seem like a huge surprise that this space is currently a howling wasteland:

Most people who actually want such a service can just tap 'mute' or their platform equivalent when the dump their phone in the beverage holder and start up the car. They aren't going to be terribly good customers, unless you do something really clever, and people who do really clever things are probably focused on sexier, or at least more lucrative, segments.

The people who really don't want such a service aren't good customers; but their worried parents might be; but any software sold for that purpose is likely to be folded into some relatively expensive, subscription based, offspring-command-and-control suite, and thus notably hostile and overengineered for an individual just trying to automate muting his own phone.

It likely doesn't help that laws regulating what you can do in your car aren't all that popular, so there isn't much incentive for carriers or platform vendors to roll out nannyware voluntarily; but, if there were a shift in the wind, they would be overwhelmingly better placed than 3rd-party vendors to take advantage of their deep control of the platform and full access to all sensor data and crush the entire market, such as it is, with a single OS update. Game over man, game over.

Under those circumstances, why even bother?

Re:I farted

[Archangel Michael]

Whatever you're doing on the phone isn't worth dying for. Period. People caught should have their license revoked and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars going to a victim compensation fund for all the idiots who lost family members due to idiot driving.

I have no sympathy for assholes who risk not only their own lives, but everyone else's. NONE

Distracted Driving

[phorm]

There seems to be very little enforcement in general. I see tons of people acting/driving in unsafe manners within plain sight of police vehicles, this includes
* Cellular phone use
* Tailgating
* Crossing against the signal (for pedestrians: I add this because just the other day, some dude did this right in front of a police car. The cop slowed down for him and then continued on)
* Unsafe passing
* etc

The only time I see somebody getting nailed seems to be either:
a) A road-check
b) Speed at high rates past a radar trap

- Posted via my smartphone while driving on the i7

Re:Easy fix

[PaddyM]

Oh yeah? Well you try turning the phone off when you're driving! I need some kind of animatronic assistant with opposable thumbs to execute my orders. Your "kill switch" approach is just another demonstration of the stagnation of technology by those who don't understand what kind of lip service I'm trying to avoid! If people like me succumbed to that sort of humdrum do-it-yourself dystopia, I'd hate to imagine what sort of synergy-less society we'd all become. Luckily I'll keep talking to all my best friends forever in my socialnetworkhood with my augmented reality headset where all us dreamers chill until we come up with something that truly solves my problem forever: distraction-free flying virtual segways coasting the information superhighway picking up apps that inspire and awe all future generations. And you just want me to turn it off. How dumb am I?!?!?!

Or.. just rethink transportation

[tlhIngan]

Perhaps the best solution is just rethink transportation, period.

Take Europe, for example. You can call the drivers there "crazy" because they run red lights, lane markings are a suggestion (you can easily fit 4 lanes of traffic in a marked 2-lane road), park practically anywhere and everywhere, etc., but then you realize - these drivers are *GOOD*.

I mean, in North America, parallel parking spots are huge - we leave huge gaps between cars. While in Europe, they leave only inches between vehicles. And you'd think down a single lane alleyway with cars parked on both sides that you'd have a bunch of cars with dings and dents, but no. The cars are generally pristine, and the drivers are quite good.

And they're texting and driving.

How? Easy. European drivers drive because they want to. Public transit means if you don't want to drive to commute, you don't.

In North America, the problem is that cities are laid out for cars, so you have to drive, even if you don't want to. And lots of people don't want to drive. Instead they want to be doing other things, so not only is the general skill level of drivers low, they're not interested in driving at all.

Hence the need to re-think transportation in North America because a good majority of people are doing something they don't want to do. In fact, it'll be better on all sides - if the disinterested drivers had usable alternate means of transport, it leaves the roads free for those who do want to drive, enhancing life for everyone concerned.

That's the fundamental problem. In Europe, they drive because they want to drive. In North America, everyone's forced to drive.

Re:Or.. just rethink transportation

[mjwx]

Take Europe, for example. You can call the drivers there "crazy" because they run red lights, lane markings are a suggestion (you can easily fit 4 lanes of traffic in a marked 2-lane road), park practically anywhere and everywhere,

Point in short, GP has never been to Europe, let alone driven there.

Breaking the law in Germany is inconceivable to Germans and will get a swift response from the AutobahnPolizei. The British dont tolerate people doing stupid things either, the Met will pull you over just to check if you've got the right permits and have paid congestion tax. Even the French will send the gendarme after you for doing the things that the GP suggested. Western Europe, Germany in particular are wonderful places to drive precisely because everyone follows the rules. People are for the most part predictable and polite, because of this predictability and lack of motorist masochism traffic flows much better... as for finding somewhere to park in Euro cities and town... Good Fucking Luck, you've clearly never been there.

Crossing the road when the "no cross" sign is on in Germany will get you death stares from Germans.

I've driven in the UK, Sweden and Germany as well as the US and Australia. The Europeans are far better drivers than we Australians because they follow the rules and thus are predictable drivers... however US drivers make the worst Australian drivers look good. However one of the big problems in the US (that's also growing in Australia) is the fact everyone drives automatics. These are much slower than manuals and breed more complacent drivers.

Obligatory

[maz2331]

Your post advocates a

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting distracted driving. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws
which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

(x) It blocks calling the cops on other drivers who pose a real threat
(x) Telling a passenger from a driver isn't possible
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(x) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop distractions for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of phones will not put up with it
( ) Google & Apple will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(x) Requires too much cooperation from drivers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Drivers don't care about crashing
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority
(x) Affecting non-drivers
(x) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(x) Other forms of distraction that are even more dangerous
( ) Unpopularity of weird new laws
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(x) Willingness of users to install inconvencing apps
(x) Bluetooth tethering to the car's audio for handsfree use
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who text while driving
(x) Dishonesty on the part of drivers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(x) Using a power button works better

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) Phone use should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to drive however we want
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatibility with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) I don't want the government tracking my phone
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

Drive.

[ledow]

I can't express how relieved I am at the majority of responses here. Most of the comments on anything that suggest people should drive the damn car and not do other things, or stay under the speed limit, or otherwise drive safely are other leapt upon like some kind of weakness is present in those expressing them.

It's quite refreshing to see the majority of people say exactly what I was thinking - drive the fucking car, ignore the fucking phone. If you can't trust yourself, turn the fucking phone off.

Stop relying on computers and fucking apps to limit your own, personal, adult, behaviour. Like those people who rely on the Amazon Fire's "time limits" for their kids, or similar methods of parental control, it just makes me think that you're too stupid to be allowed to use those devices / have a kid / drive a car in the first place.

I'm the only person I know who will not answer a phone in a moving car. I actually have difficulty EXPLAINING to people why that is. They are incredulous and don't understand it. And they still ring me while I'm driving to meet them. How hard is it? I do not answer the phone while driving, nor will I phone to tell you I'm late unless I'm literally at a complete stop AND am late enough that you need to know.

I do use my phone as a sat-nav. It's not in my line-of-sight, even, it's down by the gearstick. I don't need to look at it (especially with turn-by-turn voice) unless I've stopped and am looking for the particular house I need - I can always just keep driving, turn around, go around the block or circle a roundabout if I miss a turning.

I do not answer it while driving. Anything that might be important, you'll ring back. Anything that is important will be enough to bother me and that will make me pull over and give my attention to your message. And if I find out that you've done that knowing I'm driving just to "see where I am", you'll be put on a silent ringtone on my phone forever more.

The phone is already the rudest device in human existence (ANSWER ME NOW, ANSWER ME NOW, ANSWER ME NOW, I'LL KEEP RINGING UNTIL YOU ANSWER ME NOW, I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'RE DOING ANSWER ME NOW!). It's fast becoming the most dangerous device because of idiots like you.

Drive the fucking car. Switch the phone off. Enjoy the silence, or your music, and a legally-prescribed requirement to be excused from ignoring all those work calls that inevitably happen just as you leave.

NO PHONE CALL / EMAIL / TEXT is that important. If you're mother's dead in hospital, people will call back, and it will never be an emergency that requires your presence at the expense of every innocent driver and passenger on the road.

Seriously? This really isn't The Onion?

[sootman]

1) Set phone to "silent".
2) Put it on the passenger seat, face down.
3) There is no step 3! (Except for "have an ounce of willpower to not pick it up and check Twitter at every light.")

If you MUST see SOME info -- eg., calls from important people, just skip to step 3.

Optional: on an iPhone with iOS 7, swipe up and press the moon icon for "Do not disturb." Exceptions can be configured in Settings. I'm guessing Android has, or will soon have, something similar.

But if you want the phone to read your mind -- "don't alert me unless it's *really* important" -- then Step 1 is "Invent A.I."

Windows Phone does this well

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I have my phone set to automatically go into driving mode when I get in my care with the option set txt the caller/texter that I'm driving and will get back to them. No distractions and it works well.

Re:I farted

[maxrate]

Also allowing animated bill boards/etc right next to the freeway

Re:I farted

[Xicor]

dont forget police cars on the side of the road... that is one of the highest causes of accidents on highways..."oh shit a cop! *slams on brakes*"

Re:There's no app for that

[Jahta]

Not a tech problem, not a tech solution.

Just check your phone when you've arrived or pull over into a parking lot if you're that desperate. Seriously, how hard is that?

Apparently for some people it's a lot harder than you would think; Driver Dies After Posting Facebook Selfie.