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.

[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.

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.

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: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?!?!?!

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.