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Show HN: A machine that detects when you text and drive then shocks you [video]

66 points by nik12795 5y ago

nik12795 5y ago
25% of car accidents in the US are caused by texting and driving. Although I think the “real solution” is self driving cars or some other great technology, I wanted to run an experiment where, every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked. The video explains some of the technical details and you get to see the hilarious experiment I ran but I'll highlight a few other key points. - I thought a lot about different ways to detect when I look down. Originally this was just a solution for pausing the TV when I look down to eat so I don’t miss my show (lol), so I thought about using a camera to track my eyes. I started to go down this path but quickly aborted to avoid high costs and an over engineered solution. - I eventually used the MetaMotionC sensor from Mbientlab which has an accelerator and gyroscope, among other things (more info here: https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/ https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/). Their documentation wasn’t great so it took some time to get the sensor working with the Raspberry Pi. The sensor clips onto my glasses, so it was pretty simple to tweak the sensitivity settings and change it from detecting when you eat food to when you look down to text. - Out of curiosity, does anyone have other use cases for what this glasses sensor could be useful for? - I thought about using the Pi to send a signal to the collar to trigger the shock. This seemed pretty daunting to reverse engineer. I know I’d need some sort of transmitter to send the signal, but how else might I go about reverse engineering it to send the correct signal to the collar? Any tools, tutorials, etc that people recommend I look into? Might be useful for a future project but for this one, I used a solenoid to press the button on the remote. - Using a solenoid to press the TV remote/shock collar remote buttons was trivial for me since I recently built a robot that plays Guitar Hero (powered by solenoids). I had struggled and learned a lot in that project so there weren't any surprises this time around. - The actual texting and driving experiment only took about 30 minutes to run. But making the device, setting up the driving course, filming, editing, etc, made this all take about 6-7 weeks. Similar to my Guitar Hero robot which was on here a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838), it probably cost around $1,000 for everything (traffic cones are super expensive plus smaller costs like Raspberry Pi, shock collar, and misc tech parts).
- tgv 5y ago
  > every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked Wouldn't that be even more dangerous?
  - _Wintermute 5y ago
    I think the idea is you would stop texting while driving, rather than keep getting shocked...
    - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
      Yes especially if it kills you by causing an accident. I guess the question is just how distracting the shock itself is
      - snet0 5y ago
        Ah yes but, with the threat of being shocked and causing an accident, you will be less likely to text while driving, because you don't want to do things that might get you into an accident oh hold on a second.. "I wanted to stop smoking, so I got an implant that, when I inhale cigarette smoke, releases carcinogens into my lungs."
        giantg2 5y ago
        Except there are safer alternatives, like charging a fee from the user everytime instead of supplying the shock. I'd imagine that would be more lucrative too.
        Rumudiez 5y ago
        Sounds like something FAANG could really turn a profit with. Update Foogle Maps to prompt for reroutes more often, charge them for dismissing the prompt. Rinse and repeat…
      - nik12795 5y ago
daenz 5y ago
Because driving while texting wasn't dangerous enough, here's another device that will definitely compromise your focus and force you to have an involuntary physical reaction! It's a cool experiment, but thinking that people should be "shocked" (physically or otherwise) as a remedy to texting while they're driving is not the right approach. It's just going to cause more accidents.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Did you watch the video and did you get the sense that this was actually something I thought should be brought to market? It was a fun experiment :) I totally agree it is not the right approach and, if you watch the end of the video, I say "Is this the texting and driving solution that humanity needs? No, of course not. It makes texting and driving way more distracting and dangerous."
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    They were just having fun and not advocating it at all.
maneesh 5y ago
Pavlok founder here (wearable behavior trainer for humans with vibrate and electric zap) I have considered designing something to prevent texting while driving. But a zap during a drive seems like less safe and problematic. We see a lot of people who fall asleep while driving too. A curious problem to try and solve…
- nik12795 5y ago
  Yes, I'm familiar with Pavlok. I remember watching that episode on Shark Tank a few years ago. I come to the same "less safe and problematic" conclusion at the end of the video (which was no surprise). It's a real problem and something worth thinking about, at least until self driving cars take over.
- nefitty 5y ago
  I’ve hooked up my pavlok to a bunch of stuff using iOS shortcuts. I’m sure it would be possible to automate this already.
inetsee 5y ago
Some random thoughts. @daenz: My first thought also was that this was a very dangerous idea. My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus. My third thought: I'm too lazy right now to check, but are there apps that let you send a text by speaking the message you want to send?
- xur17 5y ago
  > My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus. There are apps that do exactly this.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  Siri does that on iPhones, but you still have to check the text and correct mistakes which might be more demanding of a task than simply typing it.
King-Aaron 5y ago
On the whole I feel modern cars with all the modern comforts and conveniences are ultimately the cause of accidents. People feel too complacent in operating what's effectively a two-ton missile. (Or as Daria's dad once put it, "you're just a radio with doors!") In my little race car, I have no radio, no air conditioner, no carpets, roll bars, bucket seats and harnesses. You're well aware you're operating machinery, and like driving a telihandler or some other machine, you don't let yourself get distracted. Phone goes in the pocket and you're absorbed with the machine you're operating. Yet in my daily driver I often find myself fiddling with spotify, or running through contact lists for phone calls via the head unit, playing with hvac settings, etc. While I don't know if consumers would accept the removal of comforts for safety sake, I feel that I'm a safer driver in my bare-bones vehicle with less overall distractions and conveniences. Ultimately like with everything, I guess it comes down to more education being required.
- nik12795 5y ago
  That's a good point. And I do agree with you that, although it may be safer with less distractions, the average consumer would not be willing to give up those comforts. How do you feel about self driving cars?
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  If it’s 40c outside, heatstroke might be a bit distracting, so I’ll keep my air conditioner thanks
  - carlmr 5y ago
    Exactly, when my AC broke on my last car I found the heat quite distracting.
  - Rumudiez 5y ago
    It was 46C here yesterday and I took my car without A/C out for an errand. The day before I enjoyed a motorcycle ride in similar weather. It can be done, but I don’t think the hvac is nearly as distracting as fiddling with a phone or even the radio since it’s more of a set-and-forget control.
forgingahead 5y ago
Can we make this for cyclists who are weaving in and out of traffic & pedestrians? Basically detect dangerous city cycling and shock them as well?
ggm 5y ago
There's pushback on touch screens in Car UI. Some people have said (I am paraphrasing) the screen is innately more confusing than dedicated functional mechanical knobs and switches. texting demands a huge amount of brain power. It's anything but a casual act. If it was a Cherry-Red alpha keyboard on the wheel, we might have a counter argument but really? it is still super demanding. It does not relate in anyway to speed, or gear, or revs, or situational awareness. Nor (I might add) does a lot of stuff on the Tesla screen. It's worrysome. (I've sat in the back of a Tesla Taxi at Schiphol, and that screen is HUGE and carries a lot of non-drive related info which "moves")
CephalopodMD 5y ago
Thought this was gonna be Michael Reeves
- rzzzt 5y ago
  His solution would just zap at random moments.
- janci 5y ago
  Exactly!
mosselman 5y ago
I find much of the responses here frustrating. I see a lot of “getting shocked is more dangerous”. What the hell? How is blindly driving a car through some urban area more dangerous than a small shock? I see so many drivers not engaging with what is happening around them, just so they can send some image or read some celebrity gossip or whatever the fuck people are doing on their phones. I think even stabbing them in the arm with a pencil a few times whenever they touch their phone would be less dangerous than letting people continue like this. I really don’t get it, in the 10+ years I’ve had my driver license I have never texted and driven. Not once. I HAVE had to brake for people on bikes, children, other cars, etc. As everyone has. I have also had drivers who were texting almost hit me while on foot because they weren’t looking up. It is just a matter of time for someone to get killed by you if you use your phone while driving: the street looks empty, you look down to text Bob “lol I know right” and boom, some child just popped out from behind of a moving car and you killed it. Wtf are people doing?
- giantg2 5y ago
  The idea of it being more dangerous is that you have someone who isn't aware of their surroundings and then you apply a shock that surprises them, some people will react with erratic movement, increasing the chance that they will "blindly" hit something. So essentially the shock is adding a confounding factor to the focal impairment. The only way the shock can reduce the overall risk is through prevention. You could do that through other less dangerous methods like charging them money instead of supplying a shock.
  - gknoy 5y ago
    Getting charged money, unless you have some audible ping or something, won't be noticed, so you don't have the immediacy of the enforcement. Great point on the danger of being shocked while driving, though.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I mean, if they're looking at their phone a push notification that overlays the texting app should be pretty disruptive to the act of texting and immediately enforce it. Actually, I'm not sure if the overlay is possible, but a phone call would be pretty intrusive and on speaker phone / hands-free would be ok.
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
The people who text & drive wouldn’t voluntarily use any solution to prevent them from doing exactly that. The solution would be some feature in cars which are either mandatory, or would give you enough benefits to be worth considering even if you are an inconsiderate person who texts & drives. And the punishment / reward could come after the ride: - you texted? Well it’s your third time this month, from now on you’ll get a ticket each time you do it. - you installed the feature, so you get a bonus check from your insurance company every month. The tech exists already: - a new mercedes have precise realtime eye tracking that makes the hud projected on the windshield look to be exactly in the same place no matter how you move your head around. - there are devices which track your driving habits (are you speeding, driving erratically, etc..), this helps you when you have to deal with an insurance case.
- charlieo88 5y ago
  The plot of Quitter's Inc in Stephen King's Cats Eye, they shocked the protagonist's wife when there was a slip.
- foxpurple 5y ago
  The solution is cameras on the streets paired with phone usage detection then if you get caught, your license is instantly terminated and you have to reapply for it.
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    You cannot be that harsh. Losing your licence for DUI is reasonable, as you have to take several willful steps to get into that situation. Picking up your phone for whatever reason is instinctual.
    - foxpurple 5y ago
      You can be that harsh when talking about controlling a piece of fast moving machinery around other people. You very easily have the ability to kill people and if you aren’t able to properly operate a car then you should be able to in public. Sure, some people are physically incapable of not checking Instagram. That’s ok. They just aren’t suited for driving.
ryandrake 5y ago
Just put your phone in the glove compartment when you get into the car. Then you can’t play with it while driving. I don’t understand what is so important that you can’t wait until you get to your destination to text or browse Instagram. This is compulsive behavior that people probably ought to seek help for.
Tade0 5y ago
There's a brilliant solution to this problem implemented in some locomotives: have a button which you need to press every now an then, otherwise an alarm is raised. Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway. Most people are right handed, so putting it on the right hand side would naturally prevent anyone from holding a phone for too long. Unless of course they are like this acquaintance of mine who would steer with his knees. Ironically he's the one who told me about that device.
- darkfirefly 5y ago
  Unfortunately, trains are a different scenario than cars, mainly due to the fact that they are on rails and are generally kept well apart through rail signals. A couple seconds where a train driver is distracted != a couple of seconds where a car driver is distracted. A button is not fast enough (you would need to press it >once per second, which is not particularly comfortable) This is why it is "necessary" to have more "advanced" ways of detecting driver inattentiveness.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway." Well... it's more difficult, but not that difficult. Use the top two finger to hold the phone, bottom two on the shifter, and thumb for the screen.
  - Tade0 5y ago
    You're a more skilled driver than me. Ooor it's just my old 00' Corolla, which never switched properly. I bought my first smartphone in 2014 and stopped driving manual in 2015, so any overlap which could allow for such tricks was fairly short.
Naushad 5y ago
People use phones, phones have all the sensors required to 'sense' if the object/person is in motion. Depending on when it is in motion, the phone could partially disbale itself. this could be done by phone makers as a feature "Driving Mode". No need for extra hardware.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  But moving phones would have to still work for everyone else except the driver, and the phone can't tell who is driving, so you'd need an off-switch for this that can't be too annoying. Lots of people ride a bus twice a day, can't have all of them confirm they're not driving every 30 seconds.
- darkfirefly 5y ago
  I don't think this really works, for a number of reasons: - A user-enabled feature for "Driving Mode" probably won't be enabled, because drivers intend to use their phone. - An automatic system that (magically) detects that you are in a car won't work, because what if you are a passenger, or in the backseat? - A system which activates when connected with the car's system could work, although drivers could again choose not to connect or a passenger could be connected instead. (Although this system wouldn't actually work for learners/under 25s many states in Australia, since you are legally not permitted to connect your phone to the car stereo)
robmccoll 5y ago
Cool project! Also, I assume, nice job going to school on Mark Rober videos. The presentation style, editing, and overall polish is there and that's a good thing.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Thank you!!
thehappypm 5y ago
I don't think of myself as someone who ever texted and drove, but I know for sure that having Apple CarPlay has dropped my time holding my phone to 0.0% of the time while driving. If I can read and write texts over voice, receive and initiate phone calls hands-free -- I'm a safe driver.
giantg2 5y ago
Is it wise to shock someone who is driving? I can see some people having erratic actions in response.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
nik12795 5y ago
For those commenting that this is more dangerous than just texting and driving, I think you're missing the point of this fun and entertaining experiment. I urge you to watch the video since I point out that it's not safer than texting and driving. I also point out that there are other ways to incentivize the driver to not text and drive, like having the driver pay a fee when they text and drive. I appreciate the discussion but a lot of these comments are bringing up points that are clearly addressed in the video. Please don't just read the headline and comment; watch the video and then lets all have an informed discussion :)
- AzN1337c0d3r 5y ago
  > the driver pay a fee when they text and drive. Rich people will just pay this fee and keep texting. Anecdotally, I noticed that all my friends who can't stay off the phone when they are driving are all heavy social media users, so I think the social shaming method will work well: The car takes a picture of them texting and driving and posts it to all their social media accounts.
  - nik12795 5y ago
    Yeah that's a good point. I also mentioned having a social shaming method where, every time you text and drive, it automatically posts "I'm currently texting and driving" on social media.
- jart 5y ago
  Ten years ago two guys built an app for recognizing movements and sold it to Google for a lot of money. https://blog.ycombinator.com/flutter-yc-w12-acquired-by-google-for-its-gesture-recognition-technology/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/flutter-yc-w12-acquired-by-goog... If you programmed a neural network attached to a camera that can see the driver's hand and eye movement to identify dangerous dark patterns in their driving behavior in real time, then corps like Uber and Amazon might want that information to save lives, but no shock collar.
  - nik12795 5y ago

66 points by nik12795 5y ago

25% of car accidents in the US are caused by texting and driving. Although I think the “real solution” is self driving cars or some other great technology, I wanted to run an experiment where, every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked. The video explains some of the technical details and you get to see the hilarious experiment I ran but I'll highlight a few other key points. - I thought a lot about different ways to detect when I look down. Originally this was just a solution for pausing the TV when I look down to eat so I don’t miss my show (lol), so I thought about using a camera to track my eyes. I started to go down this path but quickly aborted to avoid high costs and an over engineered solution. - I eventually used the MetaMotionC sensor from Mbientlab which has an accelerator and gyroscope, among other things (more info here: https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/ https://mbientlab.com/store/metamotionc/). Their documentation wasn’t great so it took some time to get the sensor working with the Raspberry Pi. The sensor clips onto my glasses, so it was pretty simple to tweak the sensitivity settings and change it from detecting when you eat food to when you look down to text. - Out of curiosity, does anyone have other use cases for what this glasses sensor could be useful for? - I thought about using the Pi to send a signal to the collar to trigger the shock. This seemed pretty daunting to reverse engineer. I know I’d need some sort of transmitter to send the signal, but how else might I go about reverse engineering it to send the correct signal to the collar? Any tools, tutorials, etc that people recommend I look into? Might be useful for a future project but for this one, I used a solenoid to press the button on the remote. - Using a solenoid to press the TV remote/shock collar remote buttons was trivial for me since I recently built a robot that plays Guitar Hero (powered by solenoids). I had struggled and learned a lot in that project so there weren't any surprises this time around. - The actual texting and driving experiment only took about 30 minutes to run. But making the device, setting up the driving course, filming, editing, etc, made this all take about 6-7 weeks. Similar to my Guitar Hero robot which was on here a while ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843838), it probably cost around $1,000 for everything (traffic cones are super expensive plus smaller costs like Raspberry Pi, shock collar, and misc tech parts).

tgv 5y ago
> every time you look down to text and drive, you get shocked Wouldn't that be even more dangerous?
- _Wintermute 5y ago
  I think the idea is you would stop texting while driving, rather than keep getting shocked...
  - weird-eye-issue 5y ago
    Yes especially if it kills you by causing an accident. I guess the question is just how distracting the shock itself is
    - snet0 5y ago
      Ah yes but, with the threat of being shocked and causing an accident, you will be less likely to text while driving, because you don't want to do things that might get you into an accident oh hold on a second.. "I wanted to stop smoking, so I got an implant that, when I inhale cigarette smoke, releases carcinogens into my lungs."
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Except there are safer alternatives, like charging a fee from the user everytime instead of supplying the shock. I'd imagine that would be more lucrative too.
        Rumudiez 5y ago
        Sounds like something FAANG could really turn a profit with. Update Foogle Maps to prompt for reroutes more often, charge them for dismissing the prompt. Rinse and repeat…
    - nik12795 5y ago

daenz 5y ago

Because driving while texting wasn't dangerous enough, here's another device that will definitely compromise your focus and force you to have an involuntary physical reaction! It's a cool experiment, but thinking that people should be "shocked" (physically or otherwise) as a remedy to texting while they're driving is not the right approach. It's just going to cause more accidents.

nik12795 5y ago
Did you watch the video and did you get the sense that this was actually something I thought should be brought to market? It was a fun experiment :) I totally agree it is not the right approach and, if you watch the end of the video, I say "Is this the texting and driving solution that humanity needs? No, of course not. It makes texting and driving way more distracting and dangerous."
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  They were just having fun and not advocating it at all.

maneesh 5y ago

Pavlok founder here (wearable behavior trainer for humans with vibrate and electric zap) I have considered designing something to prevent texting while driving. But a zap during a drive seems like less safe and problematic. We see a lot of people who fall asleep while driving too. A curious problem to try and solve…

nik12795 5y ago
Yes, I'm familiar with Pavlok. I remember watching that episode on Shark Tank a few years ago. I come to the same "less safe and problematic" conclusion at the end of the video (which was no surprise). It's a real problem and something worth thinking about, at least until self driving cars take over.
nefitty 5y ago
I’ve hooked up my pavlok to a bunch of stuff using iOS shortcuts. I’m sure it would be possible to automate this already.

inetsee 5y ago

Some random thoughts. @daenz: My first thought also was that this was a very dangerous idea. My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus. My third thought: I'm too lazy right now to check, but are there apps that let you send a text by speaking the message you want to send?

xur17 5y ago
> My second thought: Would it be possible to create an app that would disable the texting function while driving? E.g. use the GPS functionality to detect when the phone is moving above a certain speed. Of course, the problem with this solution is that you wouldn't be able to text when riding as a passenger in a car or bus. There are apps that do exactly this.
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
Siri does that on iPhones, but you still have to check the text and correct mistakes which might be more demanding of a task than simply typing it.

King-Aaron 5y ago

On the whole I feel modern cars with all the modern comforts and conveniences are ultimately the cause of accidents. People feel too complacent in operating what's effectively a two-ton missile. (Or as Daria's dad once put it, "you're just a radio with doors!") In my little race car, I have no radio, no air conditioner, no carpets, roll bars, bucket seats and harnesses. You're well aware you're operating machinery, and like driving a telihandler or some other machine, you don't let yourself get distracted. Phone goes in the pocket and you're absorbed with the machine you're operating. Yet in my daily driver I often find myself fiddling with spotify, or running through contact lists for phone calls via the head unit, playing with hvac settings, etc. While I don't know if consumers would accept the removal of comforts for safety sake, I feel that I'm a safer driver in my bare-bones vehicle with less overall distractions and conveniences. Ultimately like with everything, I guess it comes down to more education being required.

nik12795 5y ago
That's a good point. And I do agree with you that, although it may be safer with less distractions, the average consumer would not be willing to give up those comforts. How do you feel about self driving cars?
quickthrower2 5y ago
If it’s 40c outside, heatstroke might be a bit distracting, so I’ll keep my air conditioner thanks
- carlmr 5y ago
  Exactly, when my AC broke on my last car I found the heat quite distracting.
- Rumudiez 5y ago
  It was 46C here yesterday and I took my car without A/C out for an errand. The day before I enjoyed a motorcycle ride in similar weather. It can be done, but I don’t think the hvac is nearly as distracting as fiddling with a phone or even the radio since it’s more of a set-and-forget control.

forgingahead 5y ago

Can we make this for cyclists who are weaving in and out of traffic & pedestrians? Basically detect dangerous city cycling and shock them as well?

ggm 5y ago

There's pushback on touch screens in Car UI. Some people have said (I am paraphrasing) the screen is innately more confusing than dedicated functional mechanical knobs and switches. texting demands a huge amount of brain power. It's anything but a casual act. If it was a Cherry-Red alpha keyboard on the wheel, we might have a counter argument but really? it is still super demanding. It does not relate in anyway to speed, or gear, or revs, or situational awareness. Nor (I might add) does a lot of stuff on the Tesla screen. It's worrysome. (I've sat in the back of a Tesla Taxi at Schiphol, and that screen is HUGE and carries a lot of non-drive related info which "moves")

CephalopodMD 5y ago

Thought this was gonna be Michael Reeves

rzzzt 5y ago
His solution would just zap at random moments.
janci 5y ago
Exactly!

mosselman 5y ago

I find much of the responses here frustrating. I see a lot of “getting shocked is more dangerous”. What the hell? How is blindly driving a car through some urban area more dangerous than a small shock? I see so many drivers not engaging with what is happening around them, just so they can send some image or read some celebrity gossip or whatever the fuck people are doing on their phones. I think even stabbing them in the arm with a pencil a few times whenever they touch their phone would be less dangerous than letting people continue like this. I really don’t get it, in the 10+ years I’ve had my driver license I have never texted and driven. Not once. I HAVE had to brake for people on bikes, children, other cars, etc. As everyone has. I have also had drivers who were texting almost hit me while on foot because they weren’t looking up. It is just a matter of time for someone to get killed by you if you use your phone while driving: the street looks empty, you look down to text Bob “lol I know right” and boom, some child just popped out from behind of a moving car and you killed it. Wtf are people doing?

giantg2 5y ago
The idea of it being more dangerous is that you have someone who isn't aware of their surroundings and then you apply a shock that surprises them, some people will react with erratic movement, increasing the chance that they will "blindly" hit something. So essentially the shock is adding a confounding factor to the focal impairment. The only way the shock can reduce the overall risk is through prevention. You could do that through other less dangerous methods like charging them money instead of supplying a shock.
- gknoy 5y ago
  Getting charged money, unless you have some audible ping or something, won't be noticed, so you don't have the immediacy of the enforcement. Great point on the danger of being shocked while driving, though.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I mean, if they're looking at their phone a push notification that overlays the texting app should be pretty disruptive to the act of texting and immediately enforce it. Actually, I'm not sure if the overlay is possible, but a phone call would be pretty intrusive and on speaker phone / hands-free would be ok.

faeyanpiraat 5y ago

The people who text & drive wouldn’t voluntarily use any solution to prevent them from doing exactly that. The solution would be some feature in cars which are either mandatory, or would give you enough benefits to be worth considering even if you are an inconsiderate person who texts & drives. And the punishment / reward could come after the ride: - you texted? Well it’s your third time this month, from now on you’ll get a ticket each time you do it. - you installed the feature, so you get a bonus check from your insurance company every month. The tech exists already: - a new mercedes have precise realtime eye tracking that makes the hud projected on the windshield look to be exactly in the same place no matter how you move your head around. - there are devices which track your driving habits (are you speeding, driving erratically, etc..), this helps you when you have to deal with an insurance case.

charlieo88 5y ago
The plot of Quitter's Inc in Stephen King's Cats Eye, they shocked the protagonist's wife when there was a slip.
foxpurple 5y ago
The solution is cameras on the streets paired with phone usage detection then if you get caught, your license is instantly terminated and you have to reapply for it.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  You cannot be that harsh. Losing your licence for DUI is reasonable, as you have to take several willful steps to get into that situation. Picking up your phone for whatever reason is instinctual.
  - foxpurple 5y ago
    You can be that harsh when talking about controlling a piece of fast moving machinery around other people. You very easily have the ability to kill people and if you aren’t able to properly operate a car then you should be able to in public. Sure, some people are physically incapable of not checking Instagram. That’s ok. They just aren’t suited for driving.

ryandrake 5y ago

Just put your phone in the glove compartment when you get into the car. Then you can’t play with it while driving. I don’t understand what is so important that you can’t wait until you get to your destination to text or browse Instagram. This is compulsive behavior that people probably ought to seek help for.

Tade0 5y ago

There's a brilliant solution to this problem implemented in some locomotives: have a button which you need to press every now an then, otherwise an alarm is raised. Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway. Most people are right handed, so putting it on the right hand side would naturally prevent anyone from holding a phone for too long. Unless of course they are like this acquaintance of mine who would steer with his knees. Ironically he's the one who told me about that device.

darkfirefly 5y ago
Unfortunately, trains are a different scenario than cars, mainly due to the fact that they are on rails and are generally kept well apart through rail signals. A couple seconds where a train driver is distracted != a couple of seconds where a car driver is distracted. A button is not fast enough (you would need to press it >once per second, which is not particularly comfortable) This is why it is "necessary" to have more "advanced" ways of detecting driver inattentiveness.
giantg2 5y ago
"Manual transmissions used to perform this function and it's hard to text and drive in such a car unless you're on a highway." Well... it's more difficult, but not that difficult. Use the top two finger to hold the phone, bottom two on the shifter, and thumb for the screen.
- Tade0 5y ago
  You're a more skilled driver than me. Ooor it's just my old 00' Corolla, which never switched properly. I bought my first smartphone in 2014 and stopped driving manual in 2015, so any overlap which could allow for such tricks was fairly short.

Naushad 5y ago

People use phones, phones have all the sensors required to 'sense' if the object/person is in motion. Depending on when it is in motion, the phone could partially disbale itself. this could be done by phone makers as a feature "Driving Mode". No need for extra hardware.

dividedbyzero 5y ago
But moving phones would have to still work for everyone else except the driver, and the phone can't tell who is driving, so you'd need an off-switch for this that can't be too annoying. Lots of people ride a bus twice a day, can't have all of them confirm they're not driving every 30 seconds.
darkfirefly 5y ago
I don't think this really works, for a number of reasons: - A user-enabled feature for "Driving Mode" probably won't be enabled, because drivers intend to use their phone. - An automatic system that (magically) detects that you are in a car won't work, because what if you are a passenger, or in the backseat? - A system which activates when connected with the car's system could work, although drivers could again choose not to connect or a passenger could be connected instead. (Although this system wouldn't actually work for learners/under 25s many states in Australia, since you are legally not permitted to connect your phone to the car stereo)

robmccoll 5y ago

Cool project! Also, I assume, nice job going to school on Mark Rober videos. The presentation style, editing, and overall polish is there and that's a good thing.

nik12795 5y ago
Thank you!!

thehappypm 5y ago

I don't think of myself as someone who ever texted and drove, but I know for sure that having Apple CarPlay has dropped my time holding my phone to 0.0% of the time while driving. If I can read and write texts over voice, receive and initiate phone calls hands-free -- I'm a safe driver.

giantg2 5y ago

Is it wise to shock someone who is driving? I can see some people having erratic actions in response.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nik12795 5y ago

For those commenting that this is more dangerous than just texting and driving, I think you're missing the point of this fun and entertaining experiment. I urge you to watch the video since I point out that it's not safer than texting and driving. I also point out that there are other ways to incentivize the driver to not text and drive, like having the driver pay a fee when they text and drive. I appreciate the discussion but a lot of these comments are bringing up points that are clearly addressed in the video. Please don't just read the headline and comment; watch the video and then lets all have an informed discussion :)

AzN1337c0d3r 5y ago
> the driver pay a fee when they text and drive. Rich people will just pay this fee and keep texting. Anecdotally, I noticed that all my friends who can't stay off the phone when they are driving are all heavy social media users, so I think the social shaming method will work well: The car takes a picture of them texting and driving and posts it to all their social media accounts.
- nik12795 5y ago
  Yeah that's a good point. I also mentioned having a social shaming method where, every time you text and drive, it automatically posts "I'm currently texting and driving" on social media.
jart 5y ago
Ten years ago two guys built an app for recognizing movements and sold it to Google for a lot of money. https://blog.ycombinator.com/flutter-yc-w12-acquired-by-google-for-its-gesture-recognition-technology/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/flutter-yc-w12-acquired-by-goog... If you programmed a neural network attached to a camera that can see the driver's hand and eye movement to identify dangerous dark patterns in their driving behavior in real time, then corps like Uber and Amazon might want that information to save lives, but no shock collar.
- nik12795 5y ago