25% of car accidents in the US are caused by texting and driving. Although I think the “real solution” is self driving cars or some other great technology, I wanted to run an experiment where, every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked.
The video explains some of the technical details and you get to see the hilarious experiment I ran but I'll highlight a few other key points.
- I thought a lot about different ways to detect when I look down. Originally this was just a solution for pausing the TV when I look down to eat so I don’t miss my show (lol), so I thought about using a camera to track my eyes. I started to go down this path but quickly aborted to avoid high costs and an over engineered solution.
- I eventually used the MetaMotionC sensor from Mbientlab which has an accelerator and gyroscope, among other things (more info here: https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/). Their documentation wasn’t great so it took some time to get the sensor working with the Raspberry Pi. The sensor clips onto my glasses, so it was pretty simple to tweak the sensitivity settings and change it from detecting when you eat food to when you look down to text.
- Out of curiosity, does anyone have other use cases for what this glasses sensor could be useful for?
- I thought about using the Pi to send a signal to the collar to trigger the shock. This seemed pretty daunting to reverse engineer. I know I’d need some sort of transmitter to send the signal, but how else might I go about reverse engineering it to send the correct signal to the collar? Any tools, tutorials, etc that people recommend I look into? Might be useful for a future project but for this one, I used a solenoid to press the button on the remote.
- Using a solenoid to press the TV remote/shock collar remote buttons was trivial for me since I recently built a robot that plays Guitar Hero (powered by solenoids). I had struggled and learned a lot in that project so there weren't any surprises this time around.
- The actual texting and driving experiment only took about 30 minutes to run. But making the device, setting up the driving course, filming, editing, etc, made this all take about 6-7 weeks. Similar to my Guitar Hero robot which was on here a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838), it probably cost around $1,000 for everything (traffic cones are super expensive plus smaller costs like Raspberry Pi, shock collar, and misc tech parts).
Ah yes but, with the threat of being shocked and causing an accident, you will be less likely to text while driving, because you don't want to do things that might get you into an accident oh hold on a second..
"I wanted to stop smoking, so I got an implant that, when I inhale cigarette smoke, releases carcinogens into my lungs."
Except there are safer alternatives, like charging a fee from the user everytime instead of supplying the shock. I'd imagine that would be more lucrative too.
Sounds like something FAANG could really turn a profit with. Update Foogle Maps to prompt for reroutes more often, charge them for dismissing the prompt. Rinse and repeat…
Because driving while texting wasn't dangerous enough, here's another device that will definitely compromise your focus and force you to have an involuntary physical reaction!
It's a cool experiment, but thinking that people should be "shocked" (physically or otherwise) as a remedy to texting while they're driving is not the right approach. It's just going to cause more accidents.
Did you watch the video and did you get the sense that this was actually something I thought should be brought to market? It was a fun experiment :)
I totally agree it is not the right approach and, if you watch the end of the video, I say "Is this the texting and driving solution that humanity needs? No, of course not. It makes texting and driving way more distracting and dangerous."
Pavlok founder here (wearable behavior trainer for humans with vibrate and electric zap)
I have considered designing something to prevent texting while driving. But a zap during a drive seems like less safe and problematic. We see a lot of people who fall asleep while driving too.
Yes, I'm familiar with Pavlok. I remember watching that episode on Shark Tank a few years ago.
I come to the same "less safe and problematic" conclusion at the end of the video (which was no surprise). It's a real problem and something worth thinking about, at least until self driving cars take over.
@daenz: My first thought also was that this was a very dangerous idea.
My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus.
My third thought: I'm too lazy right now to check, but are there apps that let you send a text by speaking the message you want to send?
> My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus.
On the whole I feel modern cars with all the modern comforts and conveniences are ultimately the cause of accidents. People feel too complacent in operating what's effectively a two-ton missile. (Or as Daria's dad once put it, "you're just a radio with doors!")
In my little race car, I have no radio, no air conditioner, no carpets, roll bars, bucket seats and harnesses. You're well aware you're operating machinery, and like driving a telihandler or some other machine, you don't let yourself get distracted. Phone goes in the pocket and you're absorbed with the machine you're operating.
Yet in my daily driver I often find myself fiddling with spotify, or running through contact lists for phone calls via the head unit, playing with hvac settings, etc.
While I don't know if consumers would accept the removal of comforts for safety sake, I feel that I'm a safer driver in my bare-bones vehicle with less overall distractions and conveniences. Ultimately like with everything, I guess it comes down to more education being required.
That's a good point. And I do agree with you that, although it may be safer with less distractions, the average consumer would not be willing to give up those comforts. How do you feel about self driving cars?
It was 46C here yesterday and I took my car without A/C out for an errand. The day before I enjoyed a motorcycle ride in similar weather. It can be done, but I don’t think the hvac is nearly as distracting as fiddling with a phone or even the radio since it’s more of a set-and-forget control.
Now, a lot of people would be sleeping at the wheel with no radio.
No AC during winter would mean driving with heavy coats on, so I’m not sure it would be safer. During summer it means no driving at all (which could be great in itself, but it’s a harder sale than you make it look)
My point is, someone’s distraction is likely someone else’s saving feature.
This seems to me no more than a bunch of justifications. I live in a region with -40°C winters and +40°C summers (that's the extremes, but we see them every year, and the averages are not far off). Most people drive without air conditioning in summer and with just enough heating in winter to make the air tolerable in several layers of heavy clothing. It's fine.
We all have our anecdotes, so to try get a bit of distance on how well people deal with heat:
> Results show a significant positive association between fatal traffic crashes and heat waves with a 3.4% (95% CI: 0.9, 5.9%) increase in fatal traffic crashes on heat wave days versus non-heat wave days.
If the only thing keeping you awake at the wheel is having the radio on, rather than driving you should be having a break (for some people, a coffee and a micro-nap will work wonders).
I see it as a scale, where having the radio on or not could push a few point more regarding engagement in the task.
The same way someone shouldn't be driving if they're dead tired, but even if they're in an alert state, drinking a cup of coffee can sharpen them a bit more.
Agreed, if it's the only thing keeping you awake, but plenty of people find it easier to concentrate on a task if there is also a "distraction". It's like when school children fiddle with a pen to help them concentrate. The teacher might think it's a sign that they're not paying attention, but actually it's enabling them to pay attention.
While I share your perception the numbers are clear. Traffic fatalities continue to decline as cars get safer. Correlation does not imply causation of course but I find it hard to believe these trends are in spite of modern safety features.
The number of fatalities is a function of how safe the car is in an accident as well as how many accidents there are. If cars could be made perfectly safe the number of fatalities would be zero. That wouldn't mean distracted people wouldn't crash any more.
The number to look at is total accidents per mile rather than just fatal ones. Unfortunately that still won't really give you an accurate picture because there are far more variables than just the driver's level of attention.
Well, I have to imagine features like auto emergency braking, lane departure warning, blind spot detection, and many more have saved countless lives AND prevented many accidents. I know they've saved me personally from an accident.
no, those things simply lower the skill floor of driving as well as reduces attention/focus, which is the opposite of safety. all things being equal, less attention causes accidents and makes them more severe, and greater skill prevents accidents and lessens severity. some of those "safety" features can cause accidents because they counteract rather than complement the measures of a skilled driver.
Safety features reduce cognitive load and allow reallocation of limited attention span.
Take the example of (airline) autopilots. Or in the case of a car lane keeping and radar cruise control. The driver can reallocate the cognitive energy used for precise steering input and throttle control to situational awareness, further improving safety.
These features improve safety, even (especially!) in the hands of competent drivers.
> "Safety features reduce cognitive load and allow reallocation of limited attention span."
no, attention does not magically get more focused on driving by reducing already low cognitive load. most driving is already routinized, falsely lulling us into an illusory sense of security. humans do not magically get more attentive under routine when invited to be even more comfortable. autopilot is a great example: pilots eat, sleep, drink, read, and chat more, rather than paying more attention to the environment, controls, dials and gauges. this is also why traffic calming techniques that reduce overall danger are about making the ever-present risks more apparent (adding roadside trees, narrowing lanes), rather than the opposite.
those so-called "safety" features optimize for the 99% of the time that situations are routine and fine, rather than the 1% of time that they're potentially deadly, because they reduce skill and experience useful in those 1% situations. pilots talk about the same general lack of emergency preparedness induced by autopilot dependence.
However safe the interior of the car is made, the number of fatalities will not be zero. Not everyone is in a car. As your parent comment's link notes, the number of pedestrian fatalities has increased since 2010.
Something I've often wondered but don't think I've seen studies of is whether those decreases in fatalities are "compensated" by an increase of injuries. IoW, there could very much be more accidents and at the same time less of them fatal.
Notice, however, that pedestrian fatalities (further down on the same page) have soared. They do not share in the safety features that benefit the motorists who kill them.
There's pushback on touch screens in Car UI. Some people have said (I am paraphrasing) the screen is innately more confusing than dedicated functional mechanical knobs and switches.
texting demands a huge amount of brain power. It's anything but a casual act. If it was a Cherry-Red alpha keyboard on the wheel, we might have a counter argument but really? it is still super demanding. It does not relate in anyway to speed, or gear, or revs, or situational awareness.
Nor (I might add) does a lot of stuff on the Tesla screen. It's worrysome. (I've sat in the back of a Tesla Taxi at Schiphol, and that screen is HUGE and carries a lot of non-drive related info which "moves")
I find much of the responses here frustrating. I see a lot of “getting shocked is more dangerous”. What the hell? How is blindly driving a car through some urban area more dangerous than a small shock?
I see so many drivers not engaging with what is happening around them, just so they can send some image or read some celebrity gossip or whatever the fuck people are doing on their phones. I think even stabbing them in the arm with a pencil a few times whenever they touch their phone would be less dangerous than letting people continue like this.
I really don’t get it, in the 10+ years I’ve had my driver license I have never texted and driven. Not once. I HAVE had to brake for people on bikes, children, other cars, etc. As everyone has. I have also had drivers who were texting almost hit me while on foot because they weren’t looking up. It is just a matter of time for someone to get killed by you if you use your phone while driving: the street looks empty, you look down to text Bob “lol I know right” and boom, some child just popped out from behind of a moving car and you killed it. Wtf are people doing?
The idea of it being more dangerous is that you have someone who isn't aware of their surroundings and then you apply a shock that surprises them, some people will react with erratic movement, increasing the chance that they will "blindly" hit something.
So essentially the shock is adding a confounding factor to the focal impairment. The only way the shock can reduce the overall risk is through prevention. You could do that through other less dangerous methods like charging them money instead of supplying a shock.
I mean, if they're looking at their phone a push notification that overlays the texting app should be pretty disruptive to the act of texting and immediately enforce it.
Actually, I'm not sure if the overlay is possible, but a phone call would be pretty intrusive and on speaker phone / hands-free would be ok.
The first reaction will be trying to remove that notification, which helps nothing.
It seems that the best course of action would be locking out the user from the ability to text while driving, because whatever signal the user is getting is going to add to the time spent not looking where he should, but when the user can not text while driving, this time will always be zero.
Yeah, but we're talking about the voluntary system shown. If they are just removing the notification, then would they have installed it in the first place?
The people who text & drive wouldn’t voluntarily use any solution to prevent them from doing exactly that.
The solution would be some feature in cars which are either mandatory, or would give you enough benefits to be worth considering even if you are an inconsiderate person who texts & drives.
And the punishment / reward could come after the ride:
- you texted? Well it’s your third time this month, from now on you’ll get a ticket each time you do it.
- you installed the feature, so you get a bonus check from your insurance company every month.
The tech exists already:
- a new mercedes have precise realtime eye tracking that makes the hud projected on the windshield look to be exactly in the same place no matter how you move your head around.
- there are devices which track your driving habits (are you speeding, driving erratically, etc..), this helps you when you have to deal with an insurance case.
The solution is cameras on the streets paired with phone usage detection then if you get caught, your license is instantly terminated and you have to reapply for it.
You can be that harsh when talking about controlling a piece of fast moving machinery around other people. You very easily have the ability to kill people and if you aren’t able to properly operate a car then you should be able to in public.
Sure, some people are physically incapable of not checking Instagram. That’s ok. They just aren’t suited for driving.
I'm sorry but I think your views are too idealistic.
Based on your standards nobody would be on the roads.
You've also moved the goalpost, I haven't talked about browsing instagram while driving, in that case I agree with you, those people who cannot resist doing so should not be allowed to drive.
Just put your phone in the glove compartment when you get into the car. Then you can’t play with it while driving. I don’t understand what is so important that you can’t wait until you get to your destination to text or browse Instagram. This is compulsive behavior that people probably ought to seek help for.
There's a brilliant solution to this problem implemented in some locomotives: have a button which you need to press every now an then, otherwise an alarm is raised.
Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway.
Most people are right handed, so putting it on the right hand side would naturally prevent anyone from holding a phone for too long.
Unless of course they are like this acquaintance of mine who would steer with his knees. Ironically he's the one who told me about that device.
Unfortunately, trains are a different scenario than cars, mainly due to the fact that they are on rails and are generally kept well apart through rail signals.
A couple seconds where a train driver is distracted != a couple of seconds where a car driver is distracted.
A button is not fast enough (you would need to press it >once per second, which is not particularly comfortable)
This is why it is "necessary" to have more "advanced" ways of detecting driver inattentiveness.
Ooor it's just my old 00' Corolla, which never switched properly. I bought my first smartphone in 2014 and stopped driving manual in 2015, so any overlap which could allow for such tricks was fairly short.
People use phones, phones have all the sensors required to 'sense' if the object/person is in motion. Depending on when it is in motion, the phone could partially disbale itself. this could be done by phone makers as a feature "Driving Mode". No need for extra hardware.
But moving phones would have to still work for everyone else except the driver, and the phone can't tell who is driving, so you'd need an off-switch for this that can't be too annoying. Lots of people ride a bus twice a day, can't have all of them confirm they're not driving every 30 seconds.
I don't think this really works, for a number of reasons:
- A user-enabled feature for "Driving Mode" probably won't be enabled, because drivers intend to use their phone.
- An automatic system that (magically) detects that you are in a car won't work, because what if you are a passenger, or in the backseat?
- A system which activates when connected with the car's system could work, although drivers could again choose not to connect or a passenger could be connected instead.
(Although this system wouldn't actually work for learners/under 25s many states in Australia, since you are legally not permitted to connect your phone to the car stereo)
Cool project! Also, I assume, nice job going to school on Mark Rober videos. The presentation style, editing, and overall polish is there and that's a good thing.
I don't think of myself as someone who ever texted and drove, but I know for sure that having Apple CarPlay has dropped my time holding my phone to 0.0% of the time while driving. If I can read and write texts over voice, receive and initiate phone calls hands-free -- I'm a safe driver.
For those commenting that this is more dangerous than just texting and driving, I think you're missing the point of this fun and entertaining experiment. I urge you to watch the video since I point out that it's not safer than texting and driving.
I also point out that there are other ways to incentivize the driver to not text and drive, like having the driver pay a fee when they text and drive.
I appreciate the discussion but a lot of these comments are bringing up points that are clearly addressed in the video. Please don't just read the headline and comment; watch the video and then lets all have an informed discussion :)
Rich people will just pay this fee and keep texting.
Anecdotally, I noticed that all my friends who can't stay off the phone when they are driving are all heavy social media users, so I think the social shaming method will work well: The car takes a picture of them texting and driving and posts it to all their social media accounts.
Yeah that's a good point. I also mentioned having a social shaming method where, every time you text and drive, it automatically posts "I'm currently texting and driving" on social media.
Ten years ago two guys built an app for recognizing movements and sold it to Google for a lot of money. https://blog.ycombinator.com/flutter-yc-w12-acquired-by-goog... If you programmed a neural network attached to a camera that can see the driver's hand and eye movement to identify dangerous dark patterns in their driving behavior in real time, then corps like Uber and Amazon might want that information to save lives, but no shock collar.
Well I think you're making an assumption that the consumer would be educated and motivated enough to buy this product and then be willing to stick a camera in their car and keep it plugged in all the time for little short term value to the user.
Plus, with something like this, there is a difference between the end user and the person purchasing the product. The purchaser might be a parent for their child but the end user is the child. I think there's a small percentage of end users who would actually use the product their loved one bought them.
So I guess overall it feels like it would be tough to gain traction and find product market fit.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 141 ms ] threadThe video explains some of the technical details and you get to see the hilarious experiment I ran but I'll highlight a few other key points.
- I thought a lot about different ways to detect when I look down. Originally this was just a solution for pausing the TV when I look down to eat so I don’t miss my show (lol), so I thought about using a camera to track my eyes. I started to go down this path but quickly aborted to avoid high costs and an over engineered solution.
- I eventually used the MetaMotionC sensor from Mbientlab which has an accelerator and gyroscope, among other things (more info here: https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/). Their documentation wasn’t great so it took some time to get the sensor working with the Raspberry Pi. The sensor clips onto my glasses, so it was pretty simple to tweak the sensitivity settings and change it from detecting when you eat food to when you look down to text.
- Out of curiosity, does anyone have other use cases for what this glasses sensor could be useful for?
- I thought about using the Pi to send a signal to the collar to trigger the shock. This seemed pretty daunting to reverse engineer. I know I’d need some sort of transmitter to send the signal, but how else might I go about reverse engineering it to send the correct signal to the collar? Any tools, tutorials, etc that people recommend I look into? Might be useful for a future project but for this one, I used a solenoid to press the button on the remote.
- Using a solenoid to press the TV remote/shock collar remote buttons was trivial for me since I recently built a robot that plays Guitar Hero (powered by solenoids). I had struggled and learned a lot in that project so there weren't any surprises this time around.
- The actual texting and driving experiment only took about 30 minutes to run. But making the device, setting up the driving course, filming, editing, etc, made this all take about 6-7 weeks. Similar to my Guitar Hero robot which was on here a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838), it probably cost around $1,000 for everything (traffic cones are super expensive plus smaller costs like Raspberry Pi, shock collar, and misc tech parts).
Wouldn't that be even more dangerous?
"I wanted to stop smoking, so I got an implant that, when I inhale cigarette smoke, releases carcinogens into my lungs."
Why not instead of a shock link your CC and donate 1$ to a politician you like. Just pick the one from last presidential election you like less.
It's a cool experiment, but thinking that people should be "shocked" (physically or otherwise) as a remedy to texting while they're driving is not the right approach. It's just going to cause more accidents.
I totally agree it is not the right approach and, if you watch the end of the video, I say "Is this the texting and driving solution that humanity needs? No, of course not. It makes texting and driving way more distracting and dangerous."
I have considered designing something to prevent texting while driving. But a zap during a drive seems like less safe and problematic. We see a lot of people who fall asleep while driving too.
A curious problem to try and solve…
I come to the same "less safe and problematic" conclusion at the end of the video (which was no surprise). It's a real problem and something worth thinking about, at least until self driving cars take over.
@daenz: My first thought also was that this was a very dangerous idea.
My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus.
My third thought: I'm too lazy right now to check, but are there apps that let you send a text by speaking the message you want to send?
There are apps that do exactly this.
In my little race car, I have no radio, no air conditioner, no carpets, roll bars, bucket seats and harnesses. You're well aware you're operating machinery, and like driving a telihandler or some other machine, you don't let yourself get distracted. Phone goes in the pocket and you're absorbed with the machine you're operating.
Yet in my daily driver I often find myself fiddling with spotify, or running through contact lists for phone calls via the head unit, playing with hvac settings, etc.
While I don't know if consumers would accept the removal of comforts for safety sake, I feel that I'm a safer driver in my bare-bones vehicle with less overall distractions and conveniences. Ultimately like with everything, I guess it comes down to more education being required.
Now, a lot of people would be sleeping at the wheel with no radio.
No AC during winter would mean driving with heavy coats on, so I’m not sure it would be safer. During summer it means no driving at all (which could be great in itself, but it’s a harder sale than you make it look)
My point is, someone’s distraction is likely someone else’s saving feature.
> Results show a significant positive association between fatal traffic crashes and heat waves with a 3.4% (95% CI: 0.9, 5.9%) increase in fatal traffic crashes on heat wave days versus non-heat wave days.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
Doesn’t look fine to me.
The same way someone shouldn't be driving if they're dead tired, but even if they're in an alert state, drinking a cup of coffee can sharpen them a bit more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...
The number to look at is total accidents per mile rather than just fatal ones. Unfortunately that still won't really give you an accurate picture because there are far more variables than just the driver's level of attention.
Take the example of (airline) autopilots. Or in the case of a car lane keeping and radar cruise control. The driver can reallocate the cognitive energy used for precise steering input and throttle control to situational awareness, further improving safety.
These features improve safety, even (especially!) in the hands of competent drivers.
no, attention does not magically get more focused on driving by reducing already low cognitive load. most driving is already routinized, falsely lulling us into an illusory sense of security. humans do not magically get more attentive under routine when invited to be even more comfortable. autopilot is a great example: pilots eat, sleep, drink, read, and chat more, rather than paying more attention to the environment, controls, dials and gauges. this is also why traffic calming techniques that reduce overall danger are about making the ever-present risks more apparent (adding roadside trees, narrowing lanes), rather than the opposite.
those so-called "safety" features optimize for the 99% of the time that situations are routine and fine, rather than the 1% of time that they're potentially deadly, because they reduce skill and experience useful in those 1% situations. pilots talk about the same general lack of emergency preparedness induced by autopilot dependence.
texting demands a huge amount of brain power. It's anything but a casual act. If it was a Cherry-Red alpha keyboard on the wheel, we might have a counter argument but really? it is still super demanding. It does not relate in anyway to speed, or gear, or revs, or situational awareness.
Nor (I might add) does a lot of stuff on the Tesla screen. It's worrysome. (I've sat in the back of a Tesla Taxi at Schiphol, and that screen is HUGE and carries a lot of non-drive related info which "moves")
I see so many drivers not engaging with what is happening around them, just so they can send some image or read some celebrity gossip or whatever the fuck people are doing on their phones. I think even stabbing them in the arm with a pencil a few times whenever they touch their phone would be less dangerous than letting people continue like this.
I really don’t get it, in the 10+ years I’ve had my driver license I have never texted and driven. Not once. I HAVE had to brake for people on bikes, children, other cars, etc. As everyone has. I have also had drivers who were texting almost hit me while on foot because they weren’t looking up. It is just a matter of time for someone to get killed by you if you use your phone while driving: the street looks empty, you look down to text Bob “lol I know right” and boom, some child just popped out from behind of a moving car and you killed it. Wtf are people doing?
So essentially the shock is adding a confounding factor to the focal impairment. The only way the shock can reduce the overall risk is through prevention. You could do that through other less dangerous methods like charging them money instead of supplying a shock.
Great point on the danger of being shocked while driving, though.
Actually, I'm not sure if the overlay is possible, but a phone call would be pretty intrusive and on speaker phone / hands-free would be ok.
It seems that the best course of action would be locking out the user from the ability to text while driving, because whatever signal the user is getting is going to add to the time spent not looking where he should, but when the user can not text while driving, this time will always be zero.
(at least in regards to texting)
The solution would be some feature in cars which are either mandatory, or would give you enough benefits to be worth considering even if you are an inconsiderate person who texts & drives.
And the punishment / reward could come after the ride: - you texted? Well it’s your third time this month, from now on you’ll get a ticket each time you do it. - you installed the feature, so you get a bonus check from your insurance company every month.
The tech exists already: - a new mercedes have precise realtime eye tracking that makes the hud projected on the windshield look to be exactly in the same place no matter how you move your head around. - there are devices which track your driving habits (are you speeding, driving erratically, etc..), this helps you when you have to deal with an insurance case.
Losing your licence for DUI is reasonable, as you have to take several willful steps to get into that situation.
Picking up your phone for whatever reason is instinctual.
Sure, some people are physically incapable of not checking Instagram. That’s ok. They just aren’t suited for driving.
Based on your standards nobody would be on the roads.
You've also moved the goalpost, I haven't talked about browsing instagram while driving, in that case I agree with you, those people who cannot resist doing so should not be allowed to drive.
Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway.
Most people are right handed, so putting it on the right hand side would naturally prevent anyone from holding a phone for too long.
Unless of course they are like this acquaintance of mine who would steer with his knees. Ironically he's the one who told me about that device.
A couple seconds where a train driver is distracted != a couple of seconds where a car driver is distracted. A button is not fast enough (you would need to press it >once per second, which is not particularly comfortable)
This is why it is "necessary" to have more "advanced" ways of detecting driver inattentiveness.
Well... it's more difficult, but not that difficult. Use the top two finger to hold the phone, bottom two on the shifter, and thumb for the screen.
Ooor it's just my old 00' Corolla, which never switched properly. I bought my first smartphone in 2014 and stopped driving manual in 2015, so any overlap which could allow for such tricks was fairly short.
- A user-enabled feature for "Driving Mode" probably won't be enabled, because drivers intend to use their phone.
- An automatic system that (magically) detects that you are in a car won't work, because what if you are a passenger, or in the backseat?
- A system which activates when connected with the car's system could work, although drivers could again choose not to connect or a passenger could be connected instead.
(Although this system wouldn't actually work for learners/under 25s many states in Australia, since you are legally not permitted to connect your phone to the car stereo)
I also point out that there are other ways to incentivize the driver to not text and drive, like having the driver pay a fee when they text and drive.
I appreciate the discussion but a lot of these comments are bringing up points that are clearly addressed in the video. Please don't just read the headline and comment; watch the video and then lets all have an informed discussion :)
Rich people will just pay this fee and keep texting.
Anecdotally, I noticed that all my friends who can't stay off the phone when they are driving are all heavy social media users, so I think the social shaming method will work well: The car takes a picture of them texting and driving and posts it to all their social media accounts.
Plus, with something like this, there is a difference between the end user and the person purchasing the product. The purchaser might be a parent for their child but the end user is the child. I think there's a small percentage of end users who would actually use the product their loved one bought them.
So I guess overall it feels like it would be tough to gain traction and find product market fit.