|
Preventing Texting-while-Driving: Reduces Distracted Driving
By: Ben Levitan |
The dangers of multi-tasking while driving are well known. The risks, however, will depend on the attempted tasks. For an example, texting while driving is perhaps one of the riskiest activities that may lead to car accidents. Henceforth, the problem lies with convincing people that this recent capability is indeed detrimental.
While it has been recognized that there is no such thing as multi-tasking, many people still believe that they are able to multi-task. According to Cognitive Psychologists, multi-tasking is more accurately described as a continuous partial attention. Hence, with this awareness, multi-tasking is all the more dangerous when operating equipment.
Before Mothers' Against Drunk Driving (MADD) launched their campaign to educate the public on the dangers of impaired driving thirty years ago, people had a similar attitude in terms of drinking and driving. They had success, but the bigger danger is now no longer attributable to alcohol but rather due to distractions while driving. Drivers distracted by texting suffer the same level of impairment as a drunk driver. This is because the human brain is consciously and subconsciously engaged on many levels when texting while driving. Unfortunately, in this case, there is nothing like a breathalyzer to detect the impairment.
MADD successfully paved the route towards road safety using education, legislation, law enforcement and substantial media support. Advocates against distracted driving have been successful by following the same path too. However, legislation and law enforcement has never truly solved the problem of distracted driving. Instead, technology may perhaps be the solution.
The Problem Contains it's own Solution
Beginning in 1999, enacted legislation requires all telephone service carriers in the United States to provide unrestricted access to 911 Emergency Service. This service, in turn, will supply the carrier with the location of the caller and the callback number. Despite the resistance of carriers and endless waivers granted by the FCC, about 98% of the wireless carriers are complying with the FCC regulation to date.Though it was not recognized initially, the compliance did bring about great benefits to the carriers - a whole new generation of revenue-generating Location Based Services. Everything from Turn-by-Turn Directions to the location of the closest ATM is made available on your mobile phone today, for a price of course. These wonderful services should be credited to the push for mobile 911 services. The FCC's mandate for mobile location triggered the booming market for GPS capability in mobile phones. It is this exact same capability that is able to reduce distracted driving by controlling the availability of texting services.
The Solution
The GPS capability of a mobile device provides the latitude, longitude and velocity of the mobile device. A patent that was recently filed uses those capabilities to prevent mobile phones from sending or receiving text messages while traveling in a moving vehicle. This simple and elegant solution allows the blocking of texting (and any other capability such as calling) while driving. It in turn, doesn't require users to purchase new handsets. The solution, if implemented by carriers, is able to control the blocking of texting right here, right now, not in five or ten years' time.From the time the FCC handed out the mandate on 911 services in mobile phones, carriers had at least five years to ensure that all their subscribers had handsets equipped with location detection capability. Now, almost all networks are able to determine the location and velocity of any mobile device registered on the network.
The "texting prevention" solution leverages the already existing capabilities of a network to determine the location and the travelling speed of a mobile device. Consequently, it immediately stops the texting while driving function when it is discovered that the mobile device is indeed travelling too fast. To do so, carriers need only make minor software changes to implement a new feature in their network, which by law could be mandated, to potentially solve the distracted driving issue due to texting.
How does it work?
Ben Levitan has over twenty years of industry experience and is an expert on New and Developing Wireless and Cellular Standards for ANSI-41, GSM, and 3rd Generation Systems.
©Copyright - All Rights Reserved
DO NOT REPRODUCE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION BY AUTHOR.
