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NEW YORK: When does a smartphone make you dumb? When you"redriving. Dialing or texting on a phone is a proven distraction whenyou"re behind the wheel. And as "smart" astoday"s phones are, they can"t compensate for humanfolly. Phone makers and software developers are making a valiant effort tocreate elegant technical solutions, but, try as they might,they"ve yet to solve the problem of distracted driving. A new survey, released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control andPrevention last week, exposes just how severe the problem is– especially among young drivers. In the survey, about 58percent of high school seniors said they had texted or emailedwhile driving during the previous month. About 43 percent of highschool juniors acknowledged they did the same thing. Thirty-nine states ban texting behind the wheel for all age groups,and an additional five states outlaw it for novice teen drivers. Even so, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said distracteddriving is "a national epidemic." The industry doesn"t have a surefire cure. There"s abevy of phone applications (or apps) that silence a phone when theydetect that the device is moving at car speed. Although they carrynames like "SecuraFone" these solutions all havelimitations that prevent them from being widely adopted. One big shortcoming is that they can"t tell drivers frompassengers. Most of the apps assume any phone that"straveling at more than 16 kilometers per hour belongs to a driver.Of course, that phone might belong to someone in the back seat, oron a bus or train. That means these apps come with easy overridebuttons – which could also be used by a driver. The appisn"t "smart" enough to know the difference. On the plus side, these apps are "generally reliable,"said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute of HighwaySafety. They"re also a lot cheaper than they were when they debutedtwo or three years ago. At the time, app developers figuring thatsafety was priceless, charged around $40 for their products, plusrecurring fees of around $4 per month. Now, Sprint Nextel Corp.gives away its Drive First app and charges $2 per month for theservice. ZoomSafer and CellControl are two companies that offer slightlymore sophisticated solutions: apps that make sure you"re inyour car before putting the phone in "driver mode." The phone listens for a wireless signal, either from thecar"s built-in electronic system or from a proprietary devicethat plugs into the engine-diagnostics port. The phone iswirelessly linked to the car, so people who don"t usuallydrive the vehicle can ride as passengers without having theirphones go silent. Using these apps, a driver who leaves his carbehind and rides the bus won"t have his phone silenced. These apps are more difficult to set up, and more expensive.Cellcontrol charges $130 for the device that emits the wirelesssignal. Rader sees these as possible solutions for employers whomanage fleets of vehicles and need to make sure drivers comply withthe law. They may also offer some relief for parents of teenagers. But these apps share a shortcoming with the simpler, motion-sensingones: none of them work with Apple Inc."s iPhone, the singlemost popular phone in the U.S. The iPhone doesn"t let apps run "in thebackground" – that is, while the user does otherthings. That means the safe-driving apps are usually limited toBlackBerrys or those running Google Inc."s Android software. One startup company has devised a novel way of encouraging safedriving, even on iPhones. Its idea is to use an economic incentive:it records users" behavior and pays them when they leave thephone alone until the end of the trip. The app appears to have become a victim of its own success.SafeCellApp started out in 2010 by paying $1 per 160 kilometers,with a maximum payout of $250 per person per year. But last year,it changed that to $1 per 1,600 kilometers, paying at most $20 peryear. The app costs $12, plus a subscription fee of $12 per year.Most reviewers in Apple"s App Store, however, rate it aone-star rating out of five. The National Transportation Safety Board hasn"t weighed in onany apps. Its recommendation is a human solution: Just don"tuse your phone at all while driving, even if you"re using ahands-free device. The Transportation Department is also betting on human, rather thantechnological solutions. It"s awarding $2.4 million toDelaware and California for pilot projects to combine more policeenforcement with publicity campaigns against distracted driving.Similar pilot projects in Syracuse, New York, and Hartford,Connecticut, are successfully reducing distracted driving,Transportation Secretary LaHood said last week. Technology may yet bail us out of the problem of distracted driving– not by making us less distracted, but by taking care of thedriving. This summer, the government is launching a yearlong test involvingnearly 3,000 specially equipped cars, trucks and buses in AnnArbor, Michigan. These vehicles sense each other wirelessly, andwarn drivers about impending collisions, often before the othervehicle is in sight. In an even more extreme example, cars may someday soon drivethemselves. As part of a pilot project, Google Inc. has equippedcars with sophisticated 360-degree sensors and computers that neverget distracted or tired. Its cars have logged over 225,000 km on public streets with onlyoccasional human intervention through the brake or wheel.Driverless cars are now legal in Nevada, though the law stillrequires a person in the driver"s seat. "If you are really going to look to the future, you are goingto have to ask yourself: Is Google right? Should we have driverlesscars?" said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Centerfor Automotive Safety, a consumer group. "The computer drivencar with a GPS system is going to make less mistakes than a humanbeing. The question is, is society ready for it?". We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Vertical Cutting Machines Manufacturer , Automatic Carton Machine Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Flex Printing Machine.
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