People Magazine is reporting that Monday's fatal car accident of celebrity surgeon Dr. Frank Ryan was caused by texting. According to the report, Ryan was sending a Twitter message about his border collie when his car went over a Malibu cliff.
It's sad that we need another tragedy, like Frank Ryan's, to remind us of the dangers of texting while driving. According to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety (IIHS), 22 percent of car accidents in 2009 were caused by cell phone usage, including texting. Yet 40 percent of us still admit to regular cell phone use when driving.
If you just can't seem to stop yourselves from potentially fatal auto-multitasking, perhaps it's time for a technology solution to a technology problem. Solutions come in three basic types:
- Dial-In Service
You phone into a text-to-speech/speech-to-text subscription service, which reads you your emails and lets you compose responses—all through voice command. - Cell Applications
Apps such as ZoomSafer and TextArrest sense when you’re driving, usually by GPS measuring your speed, and disable most or all of your phone's functionality once a pre-determined speed is reached. All offer some sort of emergency override and passenger-usage exceptions, and some include Web-based cell phone-use monitoring. - Combination Hardware/Apps
Instead of relying on GPS to sense car usage, a small module gets attached to a part of your car such as the emergency brake or the OBD (on-board diagnostics) module. Once the module is triggered by car usage, a signal disables your phone. Another set of solutions uses a Bluetooth module to enable all-voice and text-to-speech capabilities.
Few of these apps are available for the iPhone because earlier versions of the iPhone operating system didn't support multitasking. With the release of iOS 4 in late June, though, this limitation was fixed and so more apps are expected soon.
| Name | Type | App Hardware (HW) Software (SW) Service |
Operating System |
Trigger | Subscription | Price |
| cellcontrol | disables/monitors | App/HW/SW | Blackberry Android Windows Mobile Symbian |
speed | yes | $90 $8.95/m |
| Key2SafeDriving | disables/monitors | App/HW | Blackberry Windows Mobile Symbian |
ignition | no | $99.95 |
| Try Safety First | disables | App/HW | Blackberry Android Windows Mobile |
emergency brake |
no | $99 |
| StopTxting | disables | App | Android | speed | no | free |
| TextArrest | disables/monitors | App/SW | Blackberry Android |
speed | yes | $4.99/m |
| ZoomSafer | disables | App | Blackberry Android Windows Mobile |
speed | yes | $25 $2.99/m |
| Dial2Do | read/compose | service | n/a | dial-in | yes | $4/m or $40/year |
| DriveSafe.ly | read/compose | App | Blackberry Android Windows Mobile 7 |
none | no | $13.95 |
| iLane | read/compose | App/HW | Blackberry Windows Mobile |
none | no | $399 |
| Vlingo SafeReader | read/compose | App | Blackberry Android |
none | yes | $19.99 $4.99/m |
| Voice on the Go | read/compose | service | iPhone Blackberry Android |
dial-in | yes | $5.99/m or $49.99/year |
From Deb Stone on August 19, 2010 :: 1:39 pm
Dear Josh and Suze,
I have been driving since 1963, including across the country twice and into Mexico. I have had one car accident - I was distracted talking business on my cell while driving and I ran a stop sign. And even with that experience…a cell phone in a car is like ice cream in the freezer…can’t stay away. So thanks for these recommendations. Driving over a cliff - horrible. Imagine if he had plowed into another car - yours, your spouse, your kid…..
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