Software Holds Cell Phone Calls While Driving

An anonymous reader writes "Canadian company Aegis Mobility has developed software that detects if a cell phone is moving at 'car' speeds. If so, the software, DriveAssistT, will alert the cellular network, telling it to hold calls and text messages until the drive is over. Calls are not blocked entirely; callers will be notified that the person appears to be driving, but they can still leave an emergency voice mail, which will be sent through immediately."

This is different from the OFF button how?

Seems like exactly the same as turning the phone off. I smell a patent!

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

Funny you should smell a patent: MS actually has a very similar one(though, shockingly enough, MS's variant has a lot more centralized command and control, and a lot less local decisionmaking by devices, go figure). US Patent Application 20080125102 [uspto.gov]

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

Hmmm ... What is my gf is on the phone while I am driving ...

... right.

This is slashdot. You don't have a girlfriend.

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

So its just like ignoring the god damn call until you're off the road.

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

except that you don't need to employ willpower to avoid the temptation to see who's calling

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

FSM forbid that driving might require self-control.

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

I really think you're oversimplifying to make your point. For one, it answers the call. Instead of somebody calling and thinking that you may just be out of coverage or you forgot to turn your ringer back on, they get told what the situation really is. If they are a friend or relative, they probably know you well enough to estimate when to try again. Of course, you may not want just anyone to know even that much about you, you may not have a parent or child who worries if they just don't get an answer, etc. But for people with a minor child, or a mother who can get a bit irrationally worried if they can't get in touch, or a job which requires them to respond, within reason, if the office calls, this could be very useful.

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

i agree that it's stupid to charge for this feature (really stupid), but the point of this is to provide a convenience to the subscriber, not to restrict their actions. this isn't like one of those court-ordered car breathalyzers that are meant to safeguard against poor judgment or deter stupid behavior.

chances are, if someone has this service enabled on their phone, they intend on using it. if they choose to ignore it, that's their business. it doesn't detract from the inherent usefulness of this service for those who don't want to be distracted while their car is moving.

frankly, i think legally requiring cellphone carriers to offer this type of service would be much more productive than the current state law in California requiring people to use hands-free headsets while driving--which is proven to be just as distracting as holding a phone to your ear. it's the act of engaging in a phone conversation while driving that causes accidents, not the fact that you're holding a phone with one hand. but i bet makers of hands-free headset are real happy about the government endorsement of their product.

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

"Some people can actually drive and talk on a phone at the same time...."

And some people (the same set, actually) only think they can.

Re:This is different from the OFF button how?

That must be why the made it illegal to use the phone while driving, because it's so safe.

Tbh I can drive while drunk, want me to pick your kids up from school?

Its a good thing that passengers never make calls

Per subject..

Re:Its a good thing that passengers never make cal

Good thing there's a passenger mode and you can basically opt out. I have hands free in the car and I find it useful to take the occasional call, so I wouldn't use this in a car.

Motorbikes are different. I'd definitely use something like this eliminate the distraction of the phone ringing or buzzing when riding.

Re:Its a good thing that passengers never make cal

that must be one MOTHERFUCKING loud and obnoxious ring tone to hear it over the wind and bike flying down the highway :P

Perfect for lunch or movies :)

This is brilliant

Nobody rides a train at car speeds, am I right?

Don't worry.

The "I'm in the back of an unmarked white van" patch has already been released.

Slight oversight

People don't take the train, or bus?

Car passengers don't get to make phone calls either?

But more importantly, what is Iron Man going to do to call off missiles being shot at him now?

Re:Seems to be a myth

Actually NYC is screwed up compared to many U.S. cities. Since they built the very first subways in the US, and a lot of other cities learned from their mistakes. Washington DC for example, has really good public transit, and the parts I've seen of Atlanta, while a pretty limited sample around the airport and convention centers and hotels, look very good too. New York isn't nearly as bad as most US tourists think, but having the terminals underground to give a smaller surface footprint makes it harder for the police to keep problems out - there's places that have solidly licked that particular problem just by putting the turnstyle level above ground with plenty of glass around it, and others that feel they can afford enough beat cops to really watch the entrances.

Some facts

From here [aegismobility.com]

Key Features:
Automatic initiation of service
Passenger override capability
911 always allowed
Inbound caller message is played that the subscriber is driving
Inbound caller is routed to voicemail and text messages are stored and forwarded later
Outbound calls and text messages are disallowed
Priority notification is supported as an option
Location requests are optional, when permission is granted by the subscriber
Accept list of numbers assures user control over privacy of context information

but don't let that get into your 2 minutes of hate.

Re:Well this is stupid if you don't RTFA

I don't think they thought this through at all.

Of course they have. You can TURN IT OFF if you're a passenger.

RTFA FFS.

Re:Well this is stupid if you don't RTFA

what's to stop me from turning it off AS THE DRIVER also?

That's a bit of an uninformed conclusion. Just because you can imagine a bunch of cases where such a feature is not a good idea, doesn't mean that there aren't cases where it would solve a lot of problems. If your job involved lots of short drives between destinations then it could be really useful. As soon as you start moving your phone won't interrupt you, as soon as you stop it lets you know about the calls you missed, and in the meantime it let the people trying to contact you know what's going on.

If you took your blinkers off you might realize that this is a feature that will be useful for some people, who will purchase it, and not so much for others, who won't purchase it. It's not a hard thing to get your hear around if you try. Nobodies going to purchase it and then try and figure out a way of defeating it.

If Slashdot was a crowded room, and someone were to come into the room and ask "Who owns the red car parked out the front", the answer "oh yeah, that's mine" would be lost amongst the noise of everyone else replying "It's not mine. I can't imagine why you'd think it was mine. How dare you suggest that I left a red car parked out the front".

Re:More than just that they're driving...

And for what it's worth, it's not incredibly difficult to talk on the phone while driving -- or to ignore it. I'm sure drunk driving is a much bigger problem.

Nope. Common misconception and just plain wrong

The reactions of drivers on phone calls are [theage.com.au] worse [walk.com.au] than [nowwearetalking.com.au] the reactions of drunk drivers. Check those links, or use google, you'll find a mass of studies supporting this.

So if you are someone who thinks it's okay to drive while on the phone, please turn in you license and refrain from driving at all.

Re:More than just that they're driving...

anyone that CAN'T drive while talking on the phone should turn in their licence or refrain from driving at all.

Same goes for drunk driving.
I am perfectly capable of driving while drunk. The chance of killing myself or someone else in a crash increases from a tiny fraction of a percent when sober to a larger fraction of a percent when drunk. Anyone CAN drive drunk without killing anyone 99+ percent of the time.

Comparing drunk driving to driving with a cell phone is even more ridiculous

What, are you doing a Steven Colbert impression? You don't look stuff up in books because books are just filled with worthless facts? You don't use your brain, you just go with whatever your gut says?

Scientific research finds that drivers on cellphones have WORSE reaction times than criminally-drunk drivers:

A study by the Transport Research Laboratory found drivers travelling at 113km/h took an average of 31m to stop. But drivers using hand-held mobile phones took 45m and even those talking on a hands-free phone took an average of 39m. Drivers who were just over the UK's legal drink-driving limit of .08 per cent stopped in an average distance of 35m.

Alcohol merely slows brain processing and reaction times. Using a cellphone entirely diverts higher brain functions, the task of driving is passed off to the brain's lower level autopilot systems. The brain's higher awareness systems are focused on the cellphone, unexpected events on the road outside may go completely unnoticed, and when they are noticed it takes longer to do so, and it takes the higher brain systems a moment to drop what they were doing and to switch over to processing the outside event, and then to first come up with the appropriate reaction. Drinking SLOWS reaction times to an unexpected event by a fraction of a second, but ususing a cellphone DELAYS reaction time to unexpected events by an even LARGER fraction of a second.

Autopilot-driving is sufficient to drive a car 99 percent of the time. Disasters generally occur when someone has a delayed or inappropriate reaction to some unexpected event, like a child running out into the road or someone cutting you off, or the car in front of you breaking. You can't just 'turn off your phone' after some other driver unexpectedly swerves into your lane. Well you CAN, but that is pointlessly too late to turn the cellphone off. You've already lost the reaction time and already hit someone.

-

Re:More than just that they're driving...

Their have been TV shows where people tested cell phone subjects, i.e. driving in a parking with cones laid out, or at a track, and pretty frequently, people using cell phones have reaction times similar to people who are legally drunk, and make similar numbers and types of mistakes. I've even seen examples where the reporter or host has told a driver, "What you've just done compares to a person who's driving with a BAQ of about 0.18 or 0.22." So don't be too sure drunk driving is a much bigger problem. It might just be that the drunk is drunk the whole journey, and the cell phone user is only an increased risk while they are actually on the phone, and most calls don't last the whole trip.

Stop trying.

Nearly every time I see someone driving outlandishly stupid on the road, they're using a cell phone. However, there are more stupid things that you can do while driving that are more distracting than a cell phone: changing the radio, eating, drinking, looking for something, reading directions. None of these things are illegal, merely discouraged.

Outlawing cell phone use while driving is futile; there are always ways to get around it, e.g., hands-free links. If there is no way to enforce a law, it shouldn't be a law in the first place.

I think if we stopped trying to ban it and merely strongly recommended not using cell phones while driving, we would see an effective drop in the number of people using cell phones while driving. Seat belts, for instance, weren't enforced until this past decade (at least in my state). However, advertising, education, and signs asking you to buckle up made it so the vast majority did buckle up. Was it illegal to drive without a seat belt on? No. Was it safe? Yes, so most people did it. Why can't we approach the cellphone problem like we approached the seat belt problem? Why are we so gungho about laws and declaring everything unsatisfactory illegal nowadays?