8 ms·

Phone Makers Could Cut Off Drivers. So Why Don’t They?

12 points by msabalau 10y ago

msabalau 10y ago
"But if the behavior has addictive qualities, can drivers really be expected to police themselves?" the article asks, nearly at it's end. Not answering it, of course, because if drivers actually are responsible for their actions, the rest of the story in meaningless.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  Alcohol also has addicting qualities. I'm pretty sure we allow alcohol-consuming motorists to consume their preferred beverages and just expect them to self-regulate. It would be extremely laughable if someone argued to ban bars and liquor stores, that are say within 500 meters of a road to prevent abuses.
- db48x 10y ago
  Yea, that's just one step down the path to a world where meaningless and unscientific personality tests (which is all of them) are used to dictate who is allowed to do what, all in the name of safety. I would much rather have the liberty rather than the illusion of safety. Another way to look at it is that, to quote Heinlein, ignorance is it's own death penalty. In principle the people dumb enough to drive while texting will kill themselves faster than people who aren't so dumb. On the other hand the risk of collateral damage is pretty high, so it could be ineffective. Having the police issue citations for it is not very effective, but probably worth it. Not an easy problem to solve, and one that's only going to get worse. I think that the only technical solution that might fix it would be truly self-driving cars, and you have to expect that to be pretty far off. Even if they were available right now it would take at least a decade to get good enough market penetration to really reduce the risk.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
It would be a massive breakthrough in machine learning to create software that figures out if the phone is being held by a driver or passenger, and unsurprisingly this article claims they "could" do it without presenting a method. What a load of rubbish.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Exactly. A related issue: the console in most cars disables many functions while in motion, such as the ability to dial a phone number or change settings. That prevents the passenger from doing so as well.
  - raldi 10y ago
    Especially annoying considering how all modern cars have a sensor to know if there's a passenger (so they can play a noise if they're not wearing a seatbelt). The console should unlock when there is.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      You could even go one step further, and lock the console controls if the driver doesn't have both hands on the wheel. That would still allow a passenger to use the console.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    What consoles do that? I never experienced that, even basic cars like a rental Ford Focus give you full control from the steering wheel including making a call.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      You can still do things available from the steering wheel, but Toyota and Honda both lock out specific console controls, such as the dial pad to dial an arbitrary phone number, or most of the settings dialogs.
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Could be a US thing, tho I can't remember ever trying to dial a number directly. I do remember when some german cars used to come with a dial pad in steering wheel :P
ars 10y ago
What an absolute waste of an article. It just repeats itself over and over and over quoting different people each time. "They should fix it, blah blah blah. Make them do it, blah blah blah." If you don't answer the question of HOW then you just completely wasted your readers time. There is the tiniest mention in passing about something using sound waves to guess the location of the person holding the phone. It doesn't work well. And that's it. What a useless article.
- kylerpalmer 10y ago
  Gave up less than 3 paragraphs in...
raldi 10y ago
Same reason car radios don't lock out their controls when the car is in motion, and why the driver's side visor flap doesn't lock up the mirror.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  some navigation systems will, can't look up an address while moving, even the passenger.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  Cars do lock out everything on the console except maybe the volume control.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    Some cars. All my Audi locks out is pairing a new phone. Most rental cars I've had are similar.
  - raldi 10y ago
    What car locks out, say, the frequency dial, or the track skip buttons?
dasil003 10y ago
What kind of infantilized nanny-state fingerpointing scapegoat culture are we living in here? It is beyond ridiculous to say phone makers should be responsible for fixing this problem. Not just because of the impossibility, but because of the slippery slope of impossibility for all the other things that all the hand-wringing in the world won't put under the control of major corporations' safety initiatives. How about this: texting while driving is as dangerous as drinking and driving yes? How about giving it commensurate penalties and drivers license revocation?
- mjevans 10y ago
  Only it's /not/ the same. A driver 'under the influence' can't sober up in ~5-10 seconds. A driver 'under the influence' can't /plan/ when they're going to dedicate a few seconds to interacting with a radio, or a GPS, or opening up a voice input prompt to something. What WOULD make it safer, however, is if the UI guidelines for a platform followed common sense. If they realized that OF COURSE drivers will click through some annoying popup. That it would be SAFER if they STREAMLINED interaction and gave a more astronaut glove friendly interface.
  - saurik 10y ago
    Thankfully, both of these are temporary problems: in another five years we will start transitioning large numbers of people to self-driving cars (whether privately owned or simply self-driving taxis), and this problem will go into decline.
    - ars 10y ago
      No we won't. There will not be in-city self driving cars for decades. There will be self driving cars on the freeway in specially marked and instrumented lanes made just for self driving trucks (cars will come later). But not in-city. Not till there is general AI.
      - asdfologist 10y ago
        This is one of those comments that people will dig up and mock on HN in about 5 years.
teilo 10y ago
Are what technology, pray tell, will prevent the driver from user their phone while driving, while at the same time allowing their passengers to use their own phones? Also: a great way to put Uber and Lyft out of business.
- x0x0 10y ago
  Exactly. Even ignoring things like gps / maps, music, and audiobooks / podcasts, car passengers will not tolerate their phone being disabled. Or passengers on public transit.
kylerpalmer 10y ago
Be an adult and don't use your phone while you're driving. Tired of this argument.
- nyxtom 10y ago
  It's true. Better yet, disable cellular access for most apps when you don't have Wi-Fi - to your pleasant surprise you might actually start noticing the world around you, driving or not.
brohoolio 10y ago
Today while I was driving I was waiting to make a right turn. I waited for a car to pass and then pulled out and followed the car. While the car was passing me I could see the driver texting. It was a teenager / early 20s. I followed him for 3 miles on my way to my destination. The speed limit is 50 mph. There are trees on either side of the road and the road is pretty narrow. There are hills and curves so visibility is pretty limited. The teenager was all over the road. At one point he crossed into oncoming traffic while he was going up a hill with limited visibility. It's a marvel he wasn't killed. I vowed never to bike along the road in this community. This kid could have easily killed someone. I was in a rural community. Lyft /uber aren't a solution. I'm not sure if the phone companies can solve this but man it's super dangerous out there if you aren't in a car.
- mturmon 10y ago
  In my neighborhood, we have had a lot of cars driving into fixed objects like trees and buildings, during clear weather. It feels like texting while driving.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 10y ago
Hold phone manufacturer, vendor, and carrier executives, engineers, and sales and marketing staff responsible for manslaughter charges for each death linked to phone use whilst driving. I suspect a solution to the problem will be found rapidly. This is a problem. It's a current problem. People die, at the rate of 350 per year: http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities-cell-phone-crash-data.aspx http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities-ce... Cellphone use causes over 1 in 4 car accidents: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphone-use-1-in-4-car-crashes/7018505/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphon... An earlier study put cell phone distraction at 2,600 deaths, and another 330,000 injuries, in 2005: http://www.livescience.com/121-drivers-cell-phones-kill-thousands-snarl-traffic.html http://www.livescience.com/121-drivers-cell-phones-kill-thou... Those are lives snuffed out or altered forever, plus the families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers affected. Hundreds of thousands directly, millions indirectly. For the convenience of a text, phone call, or music? If the issue is one of driver (or passenger) convenience, versus the lives of innocent drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists, or pedestrians unfortunate enough to share the road with those who are unable to resist the lure of devices designed to be as addictive as possible, then I'm going to side with safety, and against convenience. We've tried common sense. It's not working, people. The largely irrational invective expressed within this thread against the suggestion itself strikes me as a very strong argument for technolgical blocks an very strong product liability, such as that which I lead off this comment with. The argument that self-driving cars is an easier problem to solve than "is my cellphone being used in a car", or even "is my cellphone being used by a driver in a car", strikes me as ... less than convincing. I may be wrong. The point that an immediate retroactive software or OS change can fix the problem, but self-driving cars will take a a minimum years, if not a decade or more, to emerge (if ever) seems to have escaped many as well. Neither is is the job of an op-ed writer in a nontechnical newspaper to supply the technical solution. We don't require those calling for a public policy or international relations measure to specify turnkey solutions. Only to make a compelling case that the change ought be implemented. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, LG, Samsung, and many others have been murderously irresponsible. Including, I'm quite sad to say, far too many HN commenters here.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Matt Richtel, the author of this piece, is not unfamiliar with the subject of distracted driving. Indeed, he's written the book on the subject: A Deadly Wandering: A tale of tragedy and redemption in the age of attention http://www.worldcat.org/title/deadly-wandering-a-tale-of-tragedy-and-redemption-in-the-age-of-attention/oclc/889949815&referer=space_alien_cat http://www.worldcat.org/title/deadly-wandering-a-tale-of-tra...
fdsaaf 10y ago
It's very simple: I will not purchase a phone with this feature. Period. I don't need technology nannying me.
heavymark 10y ago
Um because many people use phones in cars who are "not" driving. How are companies suppose to determine when a phone is being used by a driver vs the passenger right next to them or the people in the back seats? For someone not driving there are countless good uses such as taking photos/video of sights, games, directions and more such as calling someone for an address, or for reporting your own or someone elses emergency. Trying to ban it will never work since people will always find a way around it or even worse alternatives, and any company that does, another company will exist or popup offering the ability. Just like with the industry trying to stop illegal music downloads it was futile to stop them until instead the provided a better alternative (cheap streaming, easily accessible high quality music). In the case of cars, Apple and Google are hoping to entice users into using safer more convenient options that holding a phone in their hand, with CarPlay and Android. The downside being it will take a long time before the average person has a car with that available.

12 points by msabalau 10y ago

"But if the behavior has addictive qualities, can drivers really be expected to police themselves?" the article asks, nearly at it's end. Not answering it, of course, because if drivers actually are responsible for their actions, the rest of the story in meaningless.

jdavis703 10y ago
Alcohol also has addicting qualities. I'm pretty sure we allow alcohol-consuming motorists to consume their preferred beverages and just expect them to self-regulate. It would be extremely laughable if someone argued to ban bars and liquor stores, that are say within 500 meters of a road to prevent abuses.
db48x 10y ago
Yea, that's just one step down the path to a world where meaningless and unscientific personality tests (which is all of them) are used to dictate who is allowed to do what, all in the name of safety. I would much rather have the liberty rather than the illusion of safety. Another way to look at it is that, to quote Heinlein, ignorance is it's own death penalty. In principle the people dumb enough to drive while texting will kill themselves faster than people who aren't so dumb. On the other hand the risk of collateral damage is pretty high, so it could be ineffective. Having the police issue citations for it is not very effective, but probably worth it. Not an easy problem to solve, and one that's only going to get worse. I think that the only technical solution that might fix it would be truly self-driving cars, and you have to expect that to be pretty far off. Even if they were available right now it would take at least a decade to get good enough market penetration to really reduce the risk.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

It would be a massive breakthrough in machine learning to create software that figures out if the phone is being held by a driver or passenger, and unsurprisingly this article claims they "could" do it without presenting a method. What a load of rubbish.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
Exactly. A related issue: the console in most cars disables many functions while in motion, such as the ability to dial a phone number or change settings. That prevents the passenger from doing so as well.
- raldi 10y ago
  Especially annoying considering how all modern cars have a sensor to know if there's a passenger (so they can play a noise if they're not wearing a seatbelt). The console should unlock when there is.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    You could even go one step further, and lock the console controls if the driver doesn't have both hands on the wheel. That would still allow a passenger to use the console.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dogma1138 10y ago
  What consoles do that? I never experienced that, even basic cars like a rental Ford Focus give you full control from the steering wheel including making a call.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    You can still do things available from the steering wheel, but Toyota and Honda both lock out specific console controls, such as the dial pad to dial an arbitrary phone number, or most of the settings dialogs.
    - dogma1138 10y ago
      Could be a US thing, tho I can't remember ever trying to dial a number directly. I do remember when some german cars used to come with a dial pad in steering wheel :P

ars 10y ago

What an absolute waste of an article. It just repeats itself over and over and over quoting different people each time. "They should fix it, blah blah blah. Make them do it, blah blah blah." If you don't answer the question of HOW then you just completely wasted your readers time. There is the tiniest mention in passing about something using sound waves to guess the location of the person holding the phone. It doesn't work well. And that's it. What a useless article.

kylerpalmer 10y ago
Gave up less than 3 paragraphs in...

raldi 10y ago

Same reason car radios don't lock out their controls when the car is in motion, and why the driver's side visor flap doesn't lock up the mirror.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
some navigation systems will, can't look up an address while moving, even the passenger.
dingo_bat 10y ago
Cars do lock out everything on the console except maybe the volume control.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Some cars. All my Audi locks out is pairing a new phone. Most rental cars I've had are similar.
- raldi 10y ago
  What car locks out, say, the frequency dial, or the track skip buttons?

dasil003 10y ago

What kind of infantilized nanny-state fingerpointing scapegoat culture are we living in here? It is beyond ridiculous to say phone makers should be responsible for fixing this problem. Not just because of the impossibility, but because of the slippery slope of impossibility for all the other things that all the hand-wringing in the world won't put under the control of major corporations' safety initiatives. How about this: texting while driving is as dangerous as drinking and driving yes? How about giving it commensurate penalties and drivers license revocation?

mjevans 10y ago
Only it's /not/ the same. A driver 'under the influence' can't sober up in ~5-10 seconds. A driver 'under the influence' can't /plan/ when they're going to dedicate a few seconds to interacting with a radio, or a GPS, or opening up a voice input prompt to something. What WOULD make it safer, however, is if the UI guidelines for a platform followed common sense. If they realized that OF COURSE drivers will click through some annoying popup. That it would be SAFER if they STREAMLINED interaction and gave a more astronaut glove friendly interface.
- saurik 10y ago
  Thankfully, both of these are temporary problems: in another five years we will start transitioning large numbers of people to self-driving cars (whether privately owned or simply self-driving taxis), and this problem will go into decline.
  - ars 10y ago
    No we won't. There will not be in-city self driving cars for decades. There will be self driving cars on the freeway in specially marked and instrumented lanes made just for self driving trucks (cars will come later). But not in-city. Not till there is general AI.
    - asdfologist 10y ago
      This is one of those comments that people will dig up and mock on HN in about 5 years.

teilo 10y ago

Are what technology, pray tell, will prevent the driver from user their phone while driving, while at the same time allowing their passengers to use their own phones? Also: a great way to put Uber and Lyft out of business.

x0x0 10y ago
Exactly. Even ignoring things like gps / maps, music, and audiobooks / podcasts, car passengers will not tolerate their phone being disabled. Or passengers on public transit.

kylerpalmer 10y ago

Be an adult and don't use your phone while you're driving. Tired of this argument.

nyxtom 10y ago
It's true. Better yet, disable cellular access for most apps when you don't have Wi-Fi - to your pleasant surprise you might actually start noticing the world around you, driving or not.

brohoolio 10y ago

Today while I was driving I was waiting to make a right turn. I waited for a car to pass and then pulled out and followed the car. While the car was passing me I could see the driver texting. It was a teenager / early 20s. I followed him for 3 miles on my way to my destination. The speed limit is 50 mph. There are trees on either side of the road and the road is pretty narrow. There are hills and curves so visibility is pretty limited. The teenager was all over the road. At one point he crossed into oncoming traffic while he was going up a hill with limited visibility. It's a marvel he wasn't killed. I vowed never to bike along the road in this community. This kid could have easily killed someone. I was in a rural community. Lyft /uber aren't a solution. I'm not sure if the phone companies can solve this but man it's super dangerous out there if you aren't in a car.

mturmon 10y ago
In my neighborhood, we have had a lot of cars driving into fixed objects like trees and buildings, during clear weather. It feels like texting while driving.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 10y ago

Hold phone manufacturer, vendor, and carrier executives, engineers, and sales and marketing staff responsible for manslaughter charges for each death linked to phone use whilst driving. I suspect a solution to the problem will be found rapidly. This is a problem. It's a current problem. People die, at the rate of 350 per year: http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities-cell-phone-crash-data.aspx http://www.nsc.org/learn/NSC-Initiatives/Pages/priorities-ce... Cellphone use causes over 1 in 4 car accidents: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphone-use-1-in-4-car-crashes/7018505/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2014/03/28/cellphon... An earlier study put cell phone distraction at 2,600 deaths, and another 330,000 injuries, in 2005: http://www.livescience.com/121-drivers-cell-phones-kill-thousands-snarl-traffic.html http://www.livescience.com/121-drivers-cell-phones-kill-thou... Those are lives snuffed out or altered forever, plus the families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers affected. Hundreds of thousands directly, millions indirectly. For the convenience of a text, phone call, or music? If the issue is one of driver (or passenger) convenience, versus the lives of innocent drivers, cyclists, motorcyclists, or pedestrians unfortunate enough to share the road with those who are unable to resist the lure of devices designed to be as addictive as possible, then I'm going to side with safety, and against convenience. We've tried common sense. It's not working, people. The largely irrational invective expressed within this thread against the suggestion itself strikes me as a very strong argument for technolgical blocks an very strong product liability, such as that which I lead off this comment with. The argument that self-driving cars is an easier problem to solve than "is my cellphone being used in a car", or even "is my cellphone being used by a driver in a car", strikes me as ... less than convincing. I may be wrong. The point that an immediate retroactive software or OS change can fix the problem, but self-driving cars will take a a minimum years, if not a decade or more, to emerge (if ever) seems to have escaped many as well. Neither is is the job of an op-ed writer in a nontechnical newspaper to supply the technical solution. We don't require those calling for a public policy or international relations measure to specify turnkey solutions. Only to make a compelling case that the change ought be implemented. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, LG, Samsung, and many others have been murderously irresponsible. Including, I'm quite sad to say, far too many HN commenters here.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Matt Richtel, the author of this piece, is not unfamiliar with the subject of distracted driving. Indeed, he's written the book on the subject: A Deadly Wandering: A tale of tragedy and redemption in the age of attention http://www.worldcat.org/title/deadly-wandering-a-tale-of-tragedy-and-redemption-in-the-age-of-attention/oclc/889949815&referer=space_alien_cat http://www.worldcat.org/title/deadly-wandering-a-tale-of-tra...

fdsaaf 10y ago

It's very simple: I will not purchase a phone with this feature. Period. I don't need technology nannying me.

heavymark 10y ago

Um because many people use phones in cars who are "not" driving. How are companies suppose to determine when a phone is being used by a driver vs the passenger right next to them or the people in the back seats? For someone not driving there are countless good uses such as taking photos/video of sights, games, directions and more such as calling someone for an address, or for reporting your own or someone elses emergency. Trying to ban it will never work since people will always find a way around it or even worse alternatives, and any company that does, another company will exist or popup offering the ability. Just like with the industry trying to stop illegal music downloads it was futile to stop them until instead the provided a better alternative (cheap streaming, easily accessible high quality music). In the case of cars, Apple and Google are hoping to entice users into using safer more convenient options that holding a phone in their hand, with CarPlay and Android. The downside being it will take a long time before the average person has a car with that available.