I left this as a comment on David Pogue’s review of some smart phone apps that detect when you’re driving and disable most or all of the phone’s features. Then I remembered that I have this neglected blog and my comment was long enough to constitute a quick post. Come to think of it I leave a lot of long-ish comments on web articles; maybe I should put more of them here. But I digress.
I’m guilty (not in the legal sense) of using my phone too much while driving, but these “solutions” are too expensive and flawed. And good luck with making an iPhone version, even with iPhone OS 4.0; I just don’t think Apple is going to allow one app to inhibit others. Maybe they’ll let it change the pass code temporarily so you can’t get past the lock screen?
A better solution would involve the car manufacturers working with the cell phone makers, but the best solutions, I think, are those that make it possible to perform the distracting operations hands- and eyes-free: voice control, audio feedback, text-to-speech, even speech to text. Granted this may still distract and may even increase the temptation to play with the phone for some, but I think it’s a net improvement and an easier sell than telling someone to pay to brick their phone.
By the way, I’m excited about Apple’s purchase of Siri today (ok, it was just barely yesterday). This will lead to far better hands-free functionality, if only to spare us having to type as much on a tiny touch-screen keyboard.
May 1, 2010 at 7:29 am |
What type of range do thies blockers have?
May 1, 2010 at 1:00 pm |
Pogue’s article was about phone software that prevents the host phone from calling or texting when it senses that the phone is inside a moving vehicle (based on GPS). So their “range” is the phone they’re installed on.