textndrivetips

Hands-free Distraction free?

I originally created this blog to promote the development of technologies to help put an end to texting while driving and distracted driving, but recently I’ve been having second thoughts. After reading several posts at The Safe Driver I’ve begun to wonder if technology is really going to help the problem. Some recent articles have suggested that hands-free technology may be more distracting than we think. If you think about it for a second, anything that takes our full attention away from the road – be it a Bluetooth headset or a phone – is going to effect our capacity to drive. In previous blogs I have suggested technology can make it possible to stay connected on the road but is this such a good idea? It may be the case that any technology no matter how great will take our full attention away from the road and therefore be only contributing to the problem.

 

On the other hand, wouldn’t it be great to just have the progress that less people are taking their eyes off the road completely to look at their phones? If they can dictate a response to their phone’s notification, keeping their eyes on the road at all times, is this no less distracted than checking the speedometer to make sure your under the speed limit? Accidents can take a split second and until the cars are driving themselves, can humans really be expected to be paying attention 100% of the time? Even the safest driver in the world is still human and open to a split-second of faded attention.

In my research of distracted driving it appears to me that the majority of people have unrealistic and extreme views of how to solve the “epidemic” of texting while driving. We can’t expect young people to text all their friends before they’re about to drive or install apps that are going to lock them out from their phone when it’s in motion. So what do we do, give up? No. I think more research needs to go into the behaviour of people driving distracted and offer better alternatives, that may not be perfect but are far more safer than taking your eyes off the road and typing 140 characters.

Review of Katasi Technology

Here’s a new tech solution to try to combat texting while driving. It involves installing a small black box below the steering wheel in cars that essentially blocks all incoming calls, text and notifications.

While I’m all for this kind of innovation, which is desperately needed,  I do question it slightly.

It tries to side-step the common problem of anti-text-and-drive apps:  it’s almost impossible to tell who is driving. It tries to do so by assuming if other people are in the car they’re going to tell you not to text and drive… right. The problem with this, as you may well have already gathered,  the main offenders when it comes to texting while driving are teens. If the Katasi technology is deactivated while there are other phones present, don’t expect teens to listen to the prudent advice of their friends, if they offer any.

So how do we get around this problem. You might say “Hey, just limit the deactivation range of the box”. But I foresee the creation of a arms-outstretched-to-the-other-side-of-the-car trend to evade this, making it even more dangerous. Another problem is the fact that on the Katasi website they state that the system ‘Can be overridden to allow full function within seconds’, so what’s going to stop someone desperate to check out a recent cat photo in their Facebook news feed?
In a NY Times article about the technology, we are told that the technology has stalled due to legal problems arising in conjunction with the telco backing it, Sprint. Though putting it down to financial liabilities of what-ifs, I think what Sprint may really be worried about is the unenviable task of convincing teens to install them in their cars, the comparison made: “It’s like trying to make condoms cool.”