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It's no secret that cell phone use while driving is killing, maiming and injuring thousands and the problem is getting worse, not better. With the imagination and creativity in this sector, there is no reason this problem can't be solved or drastically reduced. This should not be looked on as a problem, but a huge multi billion dollar world wide opportunity. Not taking this problem various seriously, it is only a matter of time before a major law firm sees it for what it is, one of the biggest class action law suits of all time with a huge number of deep rich pockets to attack and justifiably so. It's past time for the tech industry to attack this problem from many angles to at least mitigate it greatly. This is a great example of being able to do good and make substantial money doing it. This is a world wide problem and just doesn't apply to cars, but to anyone working in a critical situation. I have literally seen people walk into dangerous situations while on a cell phone and have done stupid things myself in the past. The thought of accidently killing someone alone should be enough to change someone, but from statistics, IT IS NOT ENOUGH. For me personal experience was enough to change and to see for many, it's not enough. It's past time for change, before it is forced on the industry. This is a world wide problem and opportunity of staggering proportions for a solution if not adopted will open the potential customer to willful and deliberate negligence. This is what might be called an ultimate opportunity in size, scope, breadth and depth.
Since this problem has been known for years and not been dealt with, this is an ideal forum to put out solutions for anyone to use. Since this is a very public forum, this would make it open source, unless noted otherwise by the writer. Let's use the crowd to come up with a variety of solutions, hopefully a few will stick.
The problem is that an optional "do not disturb" feature won't really help -- responsible drivers already don't use their phone while driving because of the risk. Irresponsible ones do including texting even though it's often illegal, and cause many crashes -- these are the people whose behaviour needs changing, and are exactly the ones who will turn an optional feature like this off.
The difficulty with any automatic/compulsory "do not disturb" feature is how to reliably separate the idiotic texting drivers from the perfectly safe texting passengers -- if this could be done it would be a big safety breakthrough, if not the "I-demand-my-rights" brigade will stop such a potentially lifesaving measure being adopted.
This is the opportunity of a lifetime for an individual or company to make a fortune and deservedly so. I hope a number of individuals and companies are currently chasing imaginative solutions to this. Total voice control would be one method, with all phone buttons and screen being inoperative in a moving vehicle. I'm sure there are many creative solutions out there and only a few massive lawsuits away from being implemented. It's sad that it may take massive lawsuits and legislation to change the current dangerous state we are in. There should be an automatic disable function of buttons and screen as soon as the engine is turned on in any vehicle, with a deliberate override for passengers with a legal warning on the screen when activated. If only a person in the drivers seat no bypass would work. Just a thought.
True, but I see this as more of a legal move. If you say you are not driving it will limit the liability of the phone provider and possibly the auto insurer.
I also see the opportunity for AI type tools to know if you are driving or not. There will always be a way around this but I see it as a good step forward.
The problem is that an optional "do not disturb" feature won't really help -- responsible drivers already don't use their phone while driving because of the risk. Irresponsible ones do including texting even though it's often illegal, and cause many crashes -- these are the people whose behaviour needs changing, and are exactly the ones who will turn an optional feature like this off.
The difficulty with any automatic/compulsory "do not disturb" feature is how to reliably separate the idiotic texting drivers from the perfectly safe texting passengers -- if this could be done it would be a big safety breakthrough, if not the "I-demand-my-rights" brigade will stop such a potentially lifesaving measure being adopted.
The issue isn't limiting the liability -- except maybe in the USA, where lawsuits rule the world -- it's stopping the texting idiots from over-riding safety measures, because they're convinced that they're immortal and the stupid restrictions shouldn't apply to them. Using your mobile while driving is already illegal in the UK but loads of people still do it all the time and cause lots of accidents because it can't be enforced. If they only killed themselves then society could say "Go ahead, it's your life" -- but unfortunately they kill other innocent people at least as often.
It should be possible for the mobile manufacturers to come up with ways to prevent this kind of stupidity, but right now they don't have any incentive to do it because many people would see a phone with such "nanny features" as restricting their freedom (to kill other people) so it would be a negative selling point not a positive one.
What's needed is a combination of carrot (to the manufacturers) and stick (better detection of infringement/stiffer penalties), but either needs governments to drive this change and they currently don't acknowledge the scale of the problem...
If someone deliberately overrides safeties, that makes them criminally guilty with intent. This would make these actions very dangerous to ones freedom and finances in the case of an accident. Any safety can be overridden and I almost saw someone's head crushed when they overrode the safety bypass on an operator's gate on an injection molding machine.
As an insurance company I would say if you opted out and crashed while texting I would not cover the damage to your car. Or the DMV could take away your license. It really is a life or death matter not unlike a DUI.
The issue isn't limiting the liability -- except maybe in the USA, where lawsuits rule the world -- it's stopping the texting idiots from over-riding safety measures, because they're convinced that they're immortal and the stupid restrictions shouldn't apply to them. Using your mobile while driving is already illegal in the UK but loads of people still do it all the time and cause lots of accidents because it can't be enforced. If they only killed themselves then society could say "Go ahead, it's your life" -- but unfortunately they kill other innocent people at least as often.
It should be possible for the mobile manufacturers to come up with ways to prevent this kind of stupidity, but right now they don't have any incentive to do it because many people would see a phone with such "nanny features" as restricting their freedom (to kill other people) so it would be a negative selling point not a positive one.
What's needed is a combination of carrot (to the manufacturers) and stick (better detection of infringement/stiffer penalties), but either needs governments to drive this change and they currently don't acknowledge the scale of the problem...
All of which needs proof that you opted out, which means there would have to be a legally watertight way of logging this opt-out that can't be circumvented or evaded, which probably means it has to be baked into the phone OS somehow -- anything else, you can bet that after such a law was introduced, within a day there'd be an app to hide the opting out. Also needs Big Brother level surveillance of what people are doing while on their phone, which would encounter a lot of resistance unless it was made a legal requirement like paying your taxes -- and probably even then...
It's not like DUI where the proof (breath/blood test) can be obtained after the event; to not pay out insurance or remove a license you'd have to prove (beyond legal doubt) that the driver was texting immediately before they crashed. Just having opted-out of the "texting ban" might be used to suggest intent to commit such a crime, but not that you actually did it.
The next question is how many thousands will be hurt or killed until the tech sector and society come up with a solution. Cell phone use while driving has become a large, if not the largest threat to safety on the road today. I wonder how many dead and maimed it will take before change takes place?
The problem is that tens of thousands of deaths per year on the roads are just accepted as a "fact of life" by most people, and they won't accept any significant impact on their "freedoms" to reduce this, especially in the USA -- look at how long it took to get seatbelts accepted there, long after the rest of the civilised world had concluded they gave a huge reduction in road deaths and injuries.
Do I get to point out that this is pretty much the same as the gun problem in the US, without being jumped on by Second Amendment supporters?
In both cases change won't happen until the majority of people acknowledge that there *is* a problem and agree that some small restriction on their freedom (to kill other people) is needed to solve it. But don't depend on logic and common sense to make this happen, since the word "freedom" is involved in both cases...
Fast and junk food dwarf all these problems in costs and lives by a significant amount, this comes from an ex junk food junkie. It's insidious since it's slow, this why I suggested in the forums real time monitoring of health/diet/exercise with sensors and apps so these factors don't sneak up on us and we can be made aware in real time the real health cost of our actions. As far as guns, the replacements people come up with if banned will be far worse and untraceable due to new technologies combined with 3D printing, or maybe malicious, dangerous lines of code. Our capabilities are expanding far faster than we can deal with them. The dangers of cell phones are far more numerous than we have even discussed in this post.
With power/wealth goes responsibility and much of SV has forgotten that.
I was shocked when I saw that feature on my iPhone for work this week when 11.03 was pushed to it. I have had it standard with Android for several years now.
Why do the experts studying the possibilities of hazards from exposure to "radiation" from cell phones (1) base their standards on the effects of heating, and then (2) study the effects on the head, considering damage to the brain, when the brain has unusually high blood perfusion which limits the heating? By contrast, sports bras often have pockets holding cell phones against the breast and the breast has much less blood perfusion so it is more readily heated?
